Site of Original Post Cemetery
Brackettville, Kinney County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This ground was Fort Clark’s Military Cemetery from 1856 to the 1880s. One of the first burials was 2nd Lt. Brayton C. Ives, 1st inf., a West Point graduate who died here on June 27, 1857. Succeeding burials included dozens of military personnel, dependents, and civilians. Pvt. Peter Corrigan, 4th U. S. Cav., the only casualty of Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie’s raid to Remolino, Mexico, was laid to rest here in may 1873. In 1880, a second cemetery opened south of the main post and this site became inactive. All burials here were reinterred at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in 1946. A historic limestone wall encloses the space. Some original headstones have been preserved.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From 1856 into the 1880s this limestone-walled ground was the burying place for Fort Clark, a frontier Army post guarding the Texas–Mexico border country. Among the dozens laid to rest here were a young West Point lieutenant who died in 1857 and Pvt. Peter Corrigan, the lone fatality of Col. Ranald Mackenzie's 1873 cross-border raid into Mexico. When a new cemetery opened south of the post in 1880 the site fell inactive, and in 1946 all its dead were reinterred at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.
Why it matters
The cemetery marks the human cost of the U.S. Army's decades-long presence on the southwestern frontier, where soldiers, their families, and civilians shared the same hard ground.
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Related people
- · Brayton C. Ives
- · Peter Corrigan
- · Ranald S. Mackenzie
Related events
- · Mackenzie's raid to Remolino, Mexico (1873)
Themes & tags
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