Concord Cemetery

The families who started this burial ground were the first Mennonites known to have come to Texas, arriving at Fairchilds in 1896. A malaria epidemic and then the 1900 hurricane devastated the settlement, and the few who stayed had moved to Richmond by the early 1900s. Later groups did better: a congregation founded at Tuleta in 1905 passed 100 members before drought scattered it in 1917, and families settled in Hale County in 1907. In 1977 Old Colony Mennonites from Chihuahua began a lasting colony in Gaines County.

What the plaque says

Concord Cemetery At the end of the 19th century, a community of Mennonites settled on the 33 lots of the Barnabas Wickson league. It is believed that the first persons interred on this site were Heinrich Reimer (d. 1898) and Maria Klassen (d. 1899). Siblings Maria and Isaac Neufeldt died of typhoid fever in 1900 and are also thought to be interred here. In 1905 George W. Howell, a non-Mennonite, deeded one acre of his land adjoining the Concord school for a public cemetery. Jacob Suderman, a Mennonite cemetery trustee, died in 1906 and probably is buried here. After the devastating 1900 storm, the Mennonites began moving away. Settlers of German, Czech and Polish descent began to occupy the area and use the burial ground. The earliest marked grave is that of Anesha Dobes, who was buried in 1913. During an archeological investigation in 1995, ten unmarked graves were discovered. (2000) Incise on back: Funded by Concord Cemetery Association of Fairchilds, Inc.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 11 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 21 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 30 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• The Menil Collection — 30 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• Town of Needville — 5.2 mi
• Needville Methodist Church — 5.7 mi
• Mamie and A.P. George — 5.8 mi
• Rosenberg — 7.5 mi