Galveston Cemeteries From Yesteryear

Galveston and Texas History Center has resources available for research on cemeteries across the island -- those located along Broadway Avenue and those elsewhere. For the latter group, these include two cemeteries that were almost lost to history: Rosewood Cemetery and Magnolia Grove Cemetery.

Rosewood Cemetery was founded in 1911 by a group of African American shareholders that organized themselves as the Rosewood Cemetery Association. It served Galveston's Black community during a time when they were not allowed to be buried in most of the city's cemeteries. Rosewood originally encompassed an eight-acre parcel of land located just north of the Seawall between 61st and 63rd Streets. Its first recorded burial was on February 1, 1912, for Robert Bailey, an infant who died at 14 days from "cerebral congestion" and gastroenteritis the day before, and the last was on June 29, 1944, for Frank Boyer, who died of uremia at 95 years of age.

Gravestones lying in a pool of water in Rosewood Cemetery, circa 1970. G_14883_FF1_10, Galveston Photographic Subject Files: Historic Sites. Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.

Noted businessman Thomas "TD" Armstrong purchased all the remaining shares from the Association by the early-1960s. By this time the cemetery had fallen into disuse and disrepair. After Armstrong died in 1972, his family sold the Rosewood property to developers John and Judy Saracco, who later sold it to the Galveston Historical Foundation in 2006. By then, the cemetery had dwindled from eight acres to just over one acre. In 2007, the Texas Historical Commission erected a historical marker dedicating the cemetery as a historic site. The cemetery remains under the care and custody of the Galveston Historical Foundation today.

GTHC is home to the administrative records of the Rosewood Cemetery Association. These records include minutes, legal and financial documents chronicling the Association's functions, as well as a list of marked graves and photographs of the remaining gravesites at the Cemetery. Other photographs of marked graves and damaged gravestones are available for viewing and download in the Galveston Photographic Subject Files: Historic Sites. Finally, more administrative and historical information about Rosewood is available in the records of W. K. Hebert and Company, a firm that provided funeral and burial services for Galveston's Black community.

Magnolia Grove Cemetery was founded in 1871 by an association that included Philip C. Tucker, who would serve as president, George W. Grover, and Nahor B. Yard, who would serve as the cemetery's treasurer. Approximately 100 acres of land near present-day Sydnor Bayou were purchased for use as a cemetery. But within a few years of its founding, Magnolia Grove fell on hard times, suffering damage from storms in 1875 and rising maintenance costs. Despite burials being performed reportedly as late as 1880, the cemetery eventually went bankrupt and parcels of its land were sold off.

Ownership of the land changed numerous times through the late 1800s. Some families were able to have their loved ones re-interred to other cemeteries on the island during these sales, but many remained buried on the property through the early 1900s. By late 1940, the city of Galveston purchased much of the land and in 1941 began developing it into a municipal airport, later called Scholes International Airport. During the development, the city exhumed bodies from the remaining marked gravestones. On July 17, 1986, Galveston City Council passed a resolution rededicating a portion of the original cemetery and designating it as a "continuous green space."

GTHC has two manuscript collections of records of the Magnolia Grove Cemetery. One collection contains a book titled "The Magnolia Grove Cemetery," containing rules, regulations, descriptions of the cemetery, and its charter and by-laws. The other collection contains a list of owners of the cemetery's burial plots and a list of early Texas figures with their burial locations at Magnolia Grove and other cemeteries. Finally, the aforementioned Historic Sites photographic subject files contains photographs of several gravestones and vaults at Magnolia Grove.

Disinterred coffins of Bertha Rogers and her children from Magnolia Grove Cemetery, 1941. They were later moved to Oleander Cemetery. G_14883_FF3_7, Galveston Photographic Subject Files: Historic Sites. Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.

Sources:

1. Rosewood Cemetery Association Records, MS88-0008, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.
2. W. K. Hebert and Company Records, MS87-0033. Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.
3. Magnolia Grove Association Records, MS71-0097. Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.
4. Magnolia Grove Cemetery Collection, MS88-0009. Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.
5. Photographs of Various Galveston Cemeteries, G-14883, Galveston Photographic Subject Files: Historic Sites. Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.
6. Mortuary Records, City of Galveston, 1875-1926, MS98-0006. Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.