San Marcos-Blanco Cemetery
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1893 five trustees of the newly formed San Marcos and Blanco Cemetery Association purchased 10.62 acres of land from w. O. and Leonora Hutchison. The trustees were Henry Richardson, Luckey McQueen, Wyatt Newman, James Langdon and Miles Bowes. The land purchased was intended for use as a cemetery by the African American citizens of the communities of Nance's Mill and Mountain City, together known as the Blanco community. The graveyard site was located midway between the two communities. The earliest recorded burial was that of Emma Hamilton in August 1886, indicating the land was in use as a graveyard prior to the land purchase. The site was called the San Marcos Colored Cemetery. More than 300 graves are marked with headstones and exist along with numerous unmarked graves. among those buried here are teachers, farmers and ministers. The site has also been used as a paupers' burial ground and was sometimes referred to as the paupers' plot. In 1981 the name was officially changed to the San Marcos Community Cemetery and in 1996 the original name was restored to the san Marcos-Blanco Cemetery. The site is still active and is maintained by the cemetery association. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1893 five trustees of the newly formed San Marcos and Blanco Cemetery Association bought more than ten acres to serve the African American communities of Nance's Mill and Mountain City, together known as the Blanco community. Burials had already begun by 1886, when Emma Hamilton was laid to rest, and the site—long called the San Marcos Colored Cemetery—holds more than 300 marked graves alongside many unmarked ones, including teachers, farmers, and ministers. Also used as a paupers' ground, the still-active cemetery had its historic name restored in 1996.
Why it matters
This cemetery preserves the memory of a self-organized African American community in Reconstruction-era Central Texas, whose members built their own institutions and cared for their own dead when segregation denied them a place elsewhere.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Emma Hamilton
- · Henry Richardson
- · Luckey McQueen
- · Wyatt Newman
- · James Langdon
- · Miles Bowes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Calaboose
San Marcos, TX
Built in 1873 as Hays County's first jail, this sturdy little brick lockup earned the folk name "Calaboose," from the Spanish calabozo. Its history traces the arc of segregation in Central Texas: an annex for Black prisoners, then a neighborhood recreation center, and during World War II a U.S.O. hospitality center for Black servicemen barred from whites-only facilities. In later years it returned to community use.
Eddie Durham
San Marcos, TX
Jazz pioneer Eddie Durham was born in San Marcos in 1906 into a musical family and played trombone and guitar in bands across the Southwest before joining Kansas City's swing scene. Working with Bennie Moten and later Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie, he helped shape the big-band sound and pioneered the single-string guitar style — recording what is often called the first amplified guitar in 1935. A gifted arranger, he had a hand in standards including 'In the Mood.'
Kyle Family Pioneer Cemetery
Kyle, TX
Long dismissed as the 'Old Slave Cemetery,' this ground holds the enslaved and freed people of Claiborne Kyle's plantation, where census records counted more than two dozen enslaved men, women and children by 1860. Burials stretched from the 1850s into the 20th century, though most graves were marked only by fieldstones or wooden markers now lost. A few carved headstones survive—Philis Martin, Vinie Kyle, a World War I veteran among them—and community-led restoration since the 1990s has reclaimed the site from obscurity.
Ulysses Cephas
San Marcos, TX
Born in San Marcos in 1884 to formerly enslaved parents, Ulysses "Boots" Cephas learned the blacksmith's trade from his father and grew into one of the county's most respected craftsmen, prized for his skill at shoeing horses and building wagons and farm tools. He owned his own shop and gave back to his community as a church member and organizer of the San Marcos Independent Band. His life traces one family's path from bondage to skilled independence in a single generation.