Recap of the Texas History Forum, “Historic Cemeteries Bus Tour”
Sherri Driscoll, Alamo Museum Educator, with Forum participants in front of Clara Driscoll’s tomb.
Armed with sunscreen, plenty of water, and comfortable shoes, attendees at the May 5 Texas History Forum enjoyed a bus tour of six Texas cemeteries. At each site, they, accompanied by Library staff members, visited the final resting places of well-known and obscure Texans, including government officials and businessmen, soldiers and generals, scholars and preservationists, and athletes and artists.
Ernesto Rodriguez, Alamo Assistant Curator, talked about Robert Gillespie and Samuel H. Walker at the Odd Fellows Cemetery.
Stops on the tour included:
- Alamo Masonic Lodge Cemetery, San Antonio: graves of Clara Driscoll, John Lang Sinclair, Sandra Ilene West, and Caiaphas Ham
- Independent Order of Odd Fellows San Antonio Lodge No. 11 Cemetery, San Antonio: graves of Robert Addison Gillespie and Samuel H. Walker and the purported burial place of the Alamo defenders
- San Antonio National Cemetery: graves of George E. M. Kelly, John Lapham Bullis, and buffalo soldiers
- City Cemetery No. 1, San Antonio: graves of William A. Menger, Lincoln Borglum, and members of the Steves, Guenther, and Maverick families
- St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, San Antonio: grave of Adina De Zavala
- Texas State Cemetery, Austin: graves of or monuments to Albert Sidney Johnston, Joanna Troutman, Walter Prescott Webb, James Frank Dobie, Stephen F. Austin, William P. Hardeman, William A. A. “Big Foot” Wallace, Susanna Dickinson, William P. Zuber, Edward Burleson, Bob Bullock, Minerva Fannin, Barbara Jordan, John B. Connally, Tom Landry, Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, and Willie Wells
Ernesto Rodriguez, Alamo Assistant Curator, and Sherri Driscoll, Alamo Museum Educator, led the tour and provided information about each Texan whose grave we visited.
Forum participants near the headstone of John L. Bullis in the San Antonio National Cemetery.
Anyone interested in learning more about the individuals listed above are welcome to visit the DRT Library and explore the archival collections, vertical files, and other materials we have by, to, or about them. Additional resources at the Library describe archaeological excavations undertaken at Texas cemeteries or include transcriptions of cemetery records.
Forum attendees learned about the founder of the Menger Hotel, located just south of the Alamo, from Ernesto Rodriguez.
Attendees appreciated the shade near the graves of Carl Hilmar Guenther and his family.
Sherri Driscoll presented information about Samuel Augustus Maverick and his famly.
Arriving at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
The Susanna Dickinson cenotaph in the Texas State Cemetery; she is buried in Austin’s Oakwood Cemetery.
