Palacios Cemetery

The cemetery sits on what had been Shanghai Pierce's bull pasture. After the cattleman's death in 1900 his estate offered it for sale, and in 1901 the Texas Rice Development Company bought it and divided it into 160-acre tracts. Its subsidiary, the Palacios City Townsite Company, sold the mile-square tract at Hamilton Point, surveyed in 1902 as Trespalacios and renamed Palacios because a nearby post office already used the Tres Palacios name. The cemetery land came from the same two companies. Alice Singer, who died in 1905, was the first resident to need it.

What the plaque says

Palacios Cemetery The primary burial ground for citizens of Palacios, this cemetery dates to the beginnings of the community. The death of Alice Singer in 1905, three years after the founding of Palacios, gave rise to the need for a community cemetery. The land, which was once a part of the estate of Texas Cattle Baron A.H. "Shanghai" Pierce, was donated to the city for use as a cemetery by the Texas Rice Development Company and the Palacios Townsite Company. The plot was surveyed in 1907, and additional land was acquired in 1918 and 1983. Located just west of the original townsite, the cemetery's grave sites are marked with a variety of monuments, from simple wooden crosses and carved angels to large granite stones. A large monument to honor U.S. military veterans was erected in 1963 by local posts of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. Soldiers and veterans of six wars are buried here -- The Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Additionally, stones marking the graves of Vietnamese refugees, a number of whom settled in Palacios and other Texas coastal towns after 1975, can be seen here. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Indianola — 21 mi
  The site of Texas's second port, where Morgan's steamships, Army freight and the first refrigerated beef passed until the hurricanes of 1875 and 1886, now mostly under Matagorda Bay.
• Half Moon Reef Lighthouse and Linnville — 24 mi
  The last screw-pile lighthouse of the Texas coast, brought ashore at Port Lavaca, a town founded by refugees from Linnville, the port Buffalo Hump's Comanches burned in August 1840.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Palacios — 0.8 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Palacios — 0.9 mi
• St. John's Episcopal Church — 0.9 mi
• Palacios Pavilions — 0.9 mi