San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Handmade folk-art grave markers still survive
If you are visiting a cemetery soon, look for a disappearing part of a Texas funerary tradition.
Made mostly during the first half of the 20th century, it’s the vernacular (folk art) concrete grave marker — usually a roundtopped simple slab, handmade by a member of the family or a friend. Like the wooden and metal markers that preceded them, they’re increasingly rare, often removed and replaced due to changing customs.
A reader who asked not to be named has seen them in area cemeteries and asked for information about them, noting that some cemeteries “want to get rid of the older vernacular markers in favor of the more homogenous marble and granite manufactured ones. In many cemeteries, there are both the older handmade markers along with the new marble ones on the same grave.”
Concrete grave markers, though “woefully underdocumented and understudied,” are “significant examples of material culture worthy of preservation,” said Carlyn Copeland Hammons, cemetery preservation program specialist for the Texas Historical Commission in Austin.
The markers are found all over the state but are most prevalent in South, East and eastern Central Texas.
While Hammons has seen concrete markers in cemeteries used by nearly all community groups, she has found that they are “most heavily concentrated in cemeteries used by African American and Mexican American communities,” where concrete may be the dominant marker material, outnumbering marble or granite headstones.
Concrete grave markers appeared early in the 20th century, “when commercial cement became widely and inexpensively available,” says Terry G. Jordan (1938-2003) in “Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy,” first published in 1982. “Poured into a mold of the desired shape, the cement is allowed to begin hardening before an inscription is written with a stylus, stick or some other pointed instrument … Marbles, glass fragments or trinkets are sometimes pressed into the damp cement marker as decoration.”
Names and dates of birth and death are the most common inscriptions, and guide lines may be drawn to keep the lettering even.
Embellishments varied. In some cases, portraits of the deceased were painted from photographs onto porcelain and glued to the marker. Others had openings were carved out to accommodate santos statues that represent religious figures, said Frank Trevino, who has volunteered extensively in area cemeteries.
Many techniques were used, said Hammons, “depending on what construction methods and materials (creators) were familiar with.” Wooden forms could be used, and markers could be poured in separate sections that were bound together with mortar or some kind of interior, possibly metal reinforcement and an external coating.
Landscape architect Everett Fly, who has led projects for the recovery and restoration of “lost” Black cemeteries, has interviewed family members of those buried in community cemeteries about vernacular markers.
“Often the markers were made by someone who had practical skills or talents with different materials,” he said. “Others were from construction trades — concrete work, stonemasons, plasterers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights or carpentry.” Decorations “often have symbolic meanings referenced in folk customs and beliefs.”
Concrete stones filled a need for markers more permanent than wood while less expensive than carved stone. But they’ve worn out their welcome in some cemeteries that are moving toward a more uniform look of polished marble or granite markers.
Brother Edward Loch, former archivist of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, has interviewed Albert Sanchez, former head of the local Catholic cemeteries. Sanchez remembered that his predecessors in the role worked toward removing the concrete markers in favor of marble or granite.
“They contacted the families if possible and had them get new stones,” Loch said. “A few escaped because the families could not be reached and (these markers) were put in storage.” Some remain in place at San Fernando Cemetery No. 1, “which didn’t have the rules that No. 2 has.”
Perhaps because of cemetery requirements, concrete markers have all but died out. “While you can still find examples of concrete markers being created and erected today,” Hammons said, “in my observations, the vast majority seem to date from the late 1910s through the 1940s,” including some still found in more formal cemeteries.
They survive in some local burial grounds, says Kurt Kneeland, a director of the San Antonio Genealogical and Historical Association, who has researched funerary art in 81 San Antonio and Bexar County family and community cemeteries. He has seen concrete markers in at least 15 of them, with death dates ranging from the 1910s through 1974.
Trevino has seen them still standing at the Eastview Cemetery, 3530 Roland Road, and at the San Pedro Cemetery in San Marcos.
“The advent of commercial, precut markers … signaled the gradual decline of folk types,” Jordan wrote more than 40 years ago. “The commercial types now dominate most burial grounds. Homemade cement markers represent the last significant survival of the southern folk tombstone tradition in Texas.”
Preservation celebration: The Schertz-Cibolo Cemetery Association will celebrate the unveiling of the cemetery’s new Texas Historical Commission marker with a dedication ceremony and other activities Nov. 18 at Mikulski Hall, 509 Schertz Parkway in Schertz. Doors will open at 9:30 a.m. with an art show and exhibits, including artifacts such as an early 1900s doctor’s buggy, U.S. and Mexican coins from the turn of the last century and other artifacts.
The cemetery was part of the farmstead of Ferdinand and August Dietz, who came from Germany in 1849. By the early 1900s, Mexican immigrants were part of the labor force for his and other farms in the Schertz-Cibolo area. The first burial there is believed to be that of a child of a farmworker family, at a time when there were no community cemeteries and most people were buried on the farms where they had lived. The property eventually was deeded to the city by a Dietz descendant. Tombstones include concrete markers, some decorated with tile or shells.
The THC marker will be unveiled at 11 a.m., and lunch will be provided. A history symposium presented by the Schertz Historical Preservation Committee will follow, with talks on the cultures that settled in the Cibolo Valley area — indigenous people, German and Mexican settlers — as well as cemetery lore. To register, visit www.sccemetery.com.
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