State Cemetery of Texas
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Burial Ground for the Honored Dead of Texas, this Cemetery contains the remains of Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas"; nine governors of Texas (as of 1968); and representatives of every period of State history and every department of State government. Statuary at the graves includes a marble figure of Albert Sidney Johnston by Elisabet Ney and bronzes of Austin and Joanna Troutman by Pompeo Coppini. The Cemetery was founded in 1851 when Gen. Edward Burleson, hero of the Texas Revolution, was interred on this tract. In 1854, the State purchased the land, which had once belonged to Andrew Jackson Hamilton, provisional governor of Texas from 1865 to 1866. The Cemetery was seldom used, however, until the 1860's, when some officers of the Confederate Army of Texas were buried here. Today small, white marble headstones mark the graves of about 1,583 soldiers and 515 graves of members of their families. Through the untiring efforts of Louis W. Kemp, a State Official (1881-1956), the remains of over 100 prominent persons were reinterred here after 1930. Since 1951 those eligible for burial here include designated State Officials, Confederate Veterans, and certain others. In 1968 there were 2,389 graves. (1968) Historic Texas Cemetery medallion attached to post.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1851 when Texas Revolution hero Gen. Edward Burleson was buried here, this ground became the resting place for the honored dead of Texas, including Stephen F. Austin, nine governors, and figures from every era of state history. Confederate officers were interred here beginning in the 1860s, and small white headstones now mark some 1,583 soldiers and their families. Through the efforts of state official Louis W. Kemp, the remains of more than a hundred prominent Texans were reinterred here after 1930, among statuary by sculptors Elisabet Ney and Pompeo Coppini.
Why it matters
The cemetery is Texas's Arlington, gathering the founders, governors, and Confederate soldiers whose stories together tell the state's passage from revolution through civil war.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the mid-nineteenth century, Texas had already lived several lifetimes as a nation and a state. It had been a Spanish and Mexican frontier, an independent republic, and then a state in the American Union — and within a single generation it would be swept into the Civil War. A young state carrying so much dramatic history needed a place to honor and gather its dead, and in 1851 that place took root.
The cemetery was founded in a era when Texas was still defining itself and its memory. Its early years were quiet; the ground was seldom used at first. But the 1860s changed everything. As the Civil War engulfed the nation, officers of the Confederate forces from Texas began to be buried here, and the cemetery filled with the reality of that conflict.
In the decades that followed, especially after 1930, a deliberate effort transformed the grounds into a true state pantheon. Prominent Texans from across the state's history were reinterred here, drawing together in one place representatives of every period of Texas's story and every branch of its government.
People & events
The cemetery's history opens in 1851 with the burial of General Edward Burleson, a hero of the Texas Revolution — the first laid to rest on this tract. In 1854 the state purchased the land, which had once belonged to Andrew Jackson Hamilton, who would serve as provisional governor of Texas in the years just after the Civil War. For a time the ground stood largely empty, until the war years of the 1860s brought Confederate officers to rest here and the cemetery began to fill.
At its center lies Stephen F. Austin, honored as the "Father of Texas," whose remains were brought here to join the state's most revered dead. Around the grounds stand works of memorial art: a marble figure of Albert Sidney Johnston sculpted by Elisabet Ney, and bronzes of Austin and of Joanna Troutman by Pompeo Coppini — monuments that turn a burial ground into a gallery of Texas memory.
Much of what the cemetery became is owed to one determined man. Through the untiring efforts of state official Louis W. Kemp, who lived from 1881 to 1956, the remains of more than a hundred prominent Texans were reinterred here after 1930. Small white marble headstones mark the graves of roughly 1,583 soldiers and more than 500 members of their families. Since 1951, eligibility for burial has been extended to designated state officials, Confederate veterans, and certain others — and by 1968 the grounds held nearly 2,400 graves.
Its place in the American story
Every state and nation needs a place to bury its honored dead, and this cemetery is Texas's answer — its own version of a national burial ground, gathering founders, governors, soldiers, and public servants into a single sacred space. In that role it stands alongside the great memorial cemeteries that give a people a physical place to remember who they were.
The grounds also embody a distinctly American impulse: the deliberate reinterment of the honored dead to build a shared civic memory. The campaign after 1930 to bring more than a hundred prominent figures here reflects the same instinct that shaped commemorative landscapes across the country in that era — the belief that a people's history should have a place you can walk through and touch.
And the cemetery holds together, without flinching, the full sweep of a complicated past. The founders of the Republic, the governors of the state, and the soldiers of the Confederacy rest on the same ground. Taken together, their graves trace the state's passage from revolution through civil war and into the modern era — a landscape where the whole tangled story is present at once.
If you visit
Walk these grounds slowly; they reward it. The rows of small white marble headstones marking the soldiers and their families stretch across the site with the sober uniformity of a military cemetery, while elsewhere the individual monuments of the state's most prominent dead rise among them.
Seek out the memorial art. Look for the marble figure of Albert Sidney Johnston by Elisabet Ney and the bronzes by Pompeo Coppini — sculpture meant to honor its subjects and to make the cemetery a place of beauty as well as remembrance. Find the resting place of the "Father of Texas" near the heart of the grounds, and let it orient you to everything around it.
Think, as you go, of the one man whose labor gathered so many of these graves together after 1930, moving more than a hundred prominent Texans to lie here. If you are traveling to understand how Texas remembers itself, this is essential ground — a single place where the founders, the governors, and the soldiers of the Civil War era all rest. Come with the quiet respect you would bring to any burial place, and give yourself time to read the names.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Edward Burleson
- · Albert Sidney Johnston
- · Louis W. Kemp
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
- · Civil War
Themes & tags
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