HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicCivil War

Strack Cemetery

Spring, Harris County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Brothers Herman and Heinrich Strack came to Texas from Feudingen, Germany in 1848 with their families. By the mid-1850s they were joined by their other brothers Johann Jost, Friedrich and Jakob, and their respective families. In 1863, Herman bought land at this site that included a pre-existing burial ground; Friedrich and Jakob later became owners of the cemetery property. The burial ground became known as the Strack Cemetery. Graves of military veterans here date to the Civil War. Today, Strack family descendants manage the site through an association. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

The Strack brothers emigrated from Feudingen, Germany, beginning with Herman and Heinrich in 1848 and followed by their kin over the next decade. In 1863 Herman bought land here that already held a burial ground, and the plot came to be known as Strack Cemetery, with veterans' graves reaching back to the Civil War. Today the family's descendants care for the site through an association.

Why it matters

This German pioneer burial ground preserves the memory of an immigrant farming community that helped settle the countryside north of Houston in the mid-19th century.

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Related people

  • · Herman Strack
  • · Heinrich Strack

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Salem Lutheran Cemetery

Tomball, TX

This burial ground began as the Scherer family cemetery among the German immigrants who settled the Rosehill community of northwest Harris County beginning in 1846, arriving by way of the port of Galveston. The families who worshipped at Salem Lutheran Church laid their dead here, including three men killed in an 1864 powder-mill explosion and veterans reaching back to the Civil War. When George Scherer deeded the ground to the church in 1869, the cemetery took the congregation's name, and its German-language stones and obelisks still record the community's founding generation.

Gustav August Forsgard

Houston, TX

At sixteen, Gustav August Samuelson left Forserum, Sweden, and arrived in Houston in November 1848 with a party of Scandinavian immigrants met by the pioneering Swedish Texans S.M. Swenson and Swante Palm. Renaming himself Forsgard for his home village, he clerked, farmed, and helped run an informal agency guiding new Swedish arrivals into Texas life. During the Civil War he served with Texas forces building fortifications to defend Galveston, and later became a civic leader in banking, church, and Masonic circles.

Heinrich Konrad Karl Leverkuhn

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German-born Heinrich Leverkuhn came to Texas in 1857 and served as a foragemaster for the Confederate army during the Civil War before opening a store in Hockley. In 1878 he took up farming and ranching in the community now called Macedonia, where he ran a cotton gin, syrup mill, and blacksmith shop. He helped found the Macedonia Methodist Church and McPherson School and, across two marriages, raised fourteen children.

Catherine Wunderlich

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Catherine Hofius immigrated from Prussia in 1852 at age 21, settling among the many German families of this part of Harris County and marrying Peter Wunderlich soon after. Widowed in 1864 when Peter died in a gunpowder-mill accident, she managed the family farm alone, raised six young children, bought more land in 1866, and added sheep and cattle to the operation. A founding member of Trinity Lutheran Church, she lived in the Klein community until her death in 1904.