Weimar Masonic Cemetery
Weimar, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On February 28, 1877, Masonic Lodge No. 423 of Weimar, which had been established two years before, purchased two acres for the creation of a lodge cemetery. The property was purchased from D.W. Jackson, who had sold two adjacent acres in 1875 to Lodge 201 of the Indpendent Order of Odd Fellows for an I.O.O.F. burial site. The Masonic Cemetery was enlarged in 1916 and 1944. On May 7, 1959, the I.O.O.F. Cemetery was deeded to the Weimar Cemetery Trust, legally combining the two sites into one cemetery under the Masonic name. A "Ladies Cemetery Association" was first established to care for the site in 1891, and Weimar Cemetery, Inc. continues today as the entity with oversight of the burial ground. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2010
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1877 Weimar's Masonic Lodge No. 423 bought two acres for a lodge cemetery, next to ground the Odd Fellows had acquired two years earlier for their own burials. A Ladies Cemetery Association formed in 1891 to care for the grounds, which grew over the following decades. In 1959 the two fraternal cemeteries were legally united under the Masonic name, and a cemetery trust still oversees the site today.
Why it matters
The cemetery reflects how fraternal orders and the women who maintained their grounds provided community, mutual aid, and dignified burial in small-town nineteenth-century Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · D.W. Jackson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Casino Hall
La Grange, TX
Built in 1880 by the Casino Association of La Grange, this handsome Italianate hall was—despite its name—a house for social and public life, not gambling, its yellow-ochre brick trimmed with iron hood moldings and a stepped cornice. It hosted music, theater, and community gatherings, and doubled as a free school; among its 1886 graduates was Annie Webb Blanton, who in 1918 became the first woman elected to Texas statewide office. Over the years it served as city hall, fire headquarters, and senior center before being restored to its original spirit of gemütlichkeit.
Methodism in Eagle Lake
Eagle Lake, TX
In a small Colorado County town, Methodism took root through a schoolhouse: by 1864 Emma Tracy Rhine had opened the community's first private school, and in 1872 the circuit rider Orceneth Fisher organized a Methodist congregation there. For decades the faithful shared a union church with Baptists, Episcopalians and others until each could build its own sanctuary, and in 1939 a grieving family gave land for the Colly Memorial church in memory of a daughter lost too young.
Sarah Creath McSherry Hibbens Stinnett Howard
Shiner, TX
This marker remembers Sarah Howard, who came to Texas from Illinois with her first husband in 1828 and endured extraordinary hardship on the frontier. Over the following decade she lost husbands and family to frontier violence, survived captivity, and escaped to raise her surviving son, marrying four times before settling with Col. Phillip Howard in Gonzales in 1839. Her repeated survival became emblematic of the endurance demanded of pioneer women on the early Texas frontier.
Welhausen Park Bandstand
Shiner, TX
Built in 1913 on land given by Confederate veteran and civic leader Capt. Charles Welhausen, this Victorian-style bandstand rose from funds raised by Shiner's women's civic club. For generations it was the stage for the town's shared life—ice cream socials, bazaars, Sunday concerts, patriotic gatherings, and moonlight picnics. Apart from a replaced floor and steps, the structure survives much as it was built.