Holy Cross Cemetery

The parish that left this graveyard behind went on to anchor a village two and a quarter miles south. Warda grew on land that A. E. Falke, a Wendish immigrant, began buying in 1867; he opened a general store in 1874 and named the place for Wartha in Saxony, his former home. When Holy Cross moved there in 1882 it brought forty families and a school of eighty-two pupils. The Lutheran school ran until 1969, the Falke store and post office stayed in the family until 1946, and the Jurk sawmill dates from 1906.

What the plaque says

Holy Cross Cemetery At former site of Holy Cross Church, founded here in Rabb's Creek area in 1873. Opened at the death of Pastor Johann Zapf (1873), the cemetery has 53 graves. Parish sold church site, retained cemetery; built a new church near Warda (2.25 mi. S) in Fayette County, in 1882. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 3.6 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 14 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 15 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 19 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.

More markers nearby

• Serbin — 3.5 mi
• Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church — 6.1 mi
• Winchester Cemetery — 6.3 mi
• City of Giddings — 7.0 mi