Saint Mary's Cemetery

The plaque mentions St. Martin's Church at Tours without saying how it began. A wagon train from Teutopolis, Illinois, reached the site on November 11, 1874, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, answering the state's call for homesteaders on university land. Families named Uptmor, Deiterman, Debbendener and Schneider led it. The settlement was first St. Martinville; in 1891 it applied for a post office, found another town with the name, and became Tours. The church went up in 1890, and Sisters of Divine Providence taught the parochial school until 1977.

What the plaque says

Saint Mary's Cemetery Early Catholic settlers in northern McLennan County worshipped at St. Martin's Church in Tours, five miles southeast of present West. After more immigrant Catholic families of Czech, Moravian, Slovak, and German origin moved to the area in the late 19th century, a new parish was established in west. St. Mary's Church of the Assumption was built in 1892, and in 1893 Joseph and Maria Hromadka sold land at this site to the Catholic Diocese for development as a cemetery are those of Vaclav Masek (1838-1892) and Mary Cocek (1875-1893) Among the more than 2,700 persons buried here are pioneer settlers, immigrants, military veterans, members of several generations of some families, and priests who have served St. Mary's parish. The Rev. Monsignor Joseph Pelnar (1865-1940), who led the Parish for forty years, is buried beneath the large stone cross in the western section of the graveyard. Many of the graves are marked with distinctive marble tombstones or metal ornamentation; a large number of inscriptions and epitaphs are in the Czech language. The cemetery serves as a visible image of the area's rich cultural history. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 13 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 15 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 15 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 15 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• Church of the Assumption — 1.9 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of West — 1.9 mi
• West — 1.9 mi
• The Crash at Crush — 2.0 mi