Brown Cemetery

The veterans' graves here belong to the hospital that grew up nearby. In 1919 a Texas benevolent society began raising money for a hospital for World War I veterans, and the Schreiners deeded it land on the Guadalupe in 1920. When money ran out in 1921, the American Legion bought the project for one dollar, giving the area its name, and gave the buildings and 748 acres to the state. The American Legion Memorial Sanatorium took its first tubercular patients on June 22, 1921. The Veterans Bureau leased it in 1923 and bought it in 1926.

What the plaque says

Brown Cemetery During the late 1840s, Joshua D. Brown (1816-1876) traveled from Gonzales and established a cypress shingle mill on the site of what is now Kerrville. This cemetery dates from 1872, when Brown's nephew, Thomas Goss was buried here. The graves of Brown and his wife, Sarah Jane (Goss), and Sarah's parents, the Rev. John and Mary Goss, are also located here. In 1923, use of part of the Brown Cemetery was granted to the Woman's Auxiliary of a local American Legion post for a veterans' burial ground that came to be called Kerrville National Cemetery. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 2.9 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 12 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 18 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Frontier Times Museum — 20 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Texas Lions Camp — 0.5 mi
• Gus F. Schreiner Home — 1.6 mi
• Schreiner College (Schreiner Institute) — 1.8 mi
• The Original Building of Tivy School — 2.6 mi