Another Washington Cemetery...

The events last Saturday in Houston at Glenwood Cemetery and our subsequent family visit to the Washington Cemetery next door got me to thinking. Such a beautiful, well manicured place, the idyllic resting place for so many of our Texas fathers and mothers...

Tuesday I was off to visit the Washington Cemetery in Washington County... knowing full well what I would find. Every ten years or so I go... hoping I will find a different result.

It was in the 1970's that descendants of our Texas founders shored up their concerns for the markers of their loved ones... and much was done to protect our cemeteries. But not in Old Washington, the final place for the very fathers and mothers and children and infants of a Nation once called The Republic of Texas. It was a somber, shameful skulk through a thicket, strewn with fallen tombstones and rotting trees, on what was once the hallowed ground of our fallen pioneers.

Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.

UPDATE: GOOD NEWS A YEAR LATER! I recent visit to the Old Washington Cemetery gave me great satisfaction, as someone has done a lot of work clearing the brush, trash trees, vines and whatever from this ancient Texas burial ground. Good job! If I knew who they were, I would sure volunteer to help. There is still a great deal more to do, but it is a very promising start on reclaiming this special historic place.