Evergreen Cemetery of Victoria

The plaque names Martín De León; a tour script prepared by Henry Wolff Jr. in 2002 names a good many others. Margaret Borland, a widow who managed more than 10,000 cattle, drove a herd up the Chisholm Trail, died of trail fever at Wichita, Kansas, in 1873, and came home for burial. Isaac Reed, the Signal Service observer at Indianola, died at his post in the 1886 storm. Gilbert Onderdonk, a nurseryman, advised the Department of Agriculture on fruit. Von Roeder, a Prussian-born Union veteran, lies in a Confederate plot.

What the plaque says

Evergreen Cemetery of Victoria The first community cemetery in Victoria, located at present day Memorial Square, was unpopular with local citizens. They preferred home burial despite an 1846 city ordinance prohobiting the practice. In 1849 John McCrabb bought 27 acres of a tract granted to the city by the Republic of Texas. The property already contained the gravesite of Dr. Walter Fosgate, who died in 1848. During the 1850s, part of McCrabb's land became the new public cemetery. Following the Civil War (1861-65), many graves were moved here from the original city cemetery. Other reinterments occurred when old St. Mary's Catholic Church was razed in 1868. Because of city neglect, local women organized the Victoria Ladies' Cemetery Association in 1876 and took over care of the plot. The name "Evergreen Cemetery" was chosen in 1883 because of abundant trees in the area. The Evergreen Cemetery Endowment Association was established in 1912 to manage investment of maintenance funds. Over the years, further land acquistion has enlarged the site to 30 acres. Among the 9,000 graves here are those of Martin de Leon (1765-1833), early empresario and founder of Victoria; and veterans of the Texas Revolution, Mexican War, and Civil War. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — 0.8 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.6 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Darwin M. Stapp — steps away
• Victor Marion Rose — steps away
• Silvestre De Leon — steps away
• Don Martin De Leon — steps away