Memorial Square - Victoria, Texas
Posted by: 
JimmyEv
N 28° 48.055 W 097° 00.087
14R E 695051 N 3187568
In 1846, a cholera epidemic necessitated burial of victims in mass graves in this square. The graves are not marked, but the square is now a quiet (and neglected) park, with a few interesting monuments including a windmill.
Waymark Code: WM1GBH
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 05/03/2007
Views: 105
This block was set-aside by colony founder Martin de Leon as a community graveyard. Early pioneers and settlers were buried here. A frightening cholera epidemic struck Victoria in 1846. Burials in family plots were banned; all victims had to be buried here, in mass graves. The dire circumstances gave rise to the
Legend of Black Peter. Evergreen Cemetery opened in 1850, and this block gradually fell out of use as a cemetery. During Reconstruction, rumors spread of a regiment of African-American Union soldiers destroying many of the headstones. Alarmed locals moved the graves they could identify to Evergreen Cemetery. By 1899, not many headstones remained and the cemetery was designated a public square for the erection of monuments and memorials.
In 1935, the Victoria Grist Windmill was moved from Spring Creek to the center of the square. The following year, during the Texas centennial, a memorial wall with a brass relief was erected on the north side of the square. The relief details the history of Victoria County, from Spainard explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca in 1534 to the creation of Victoria County in the Republic of Texas on March 17, 1836. In the center of the relief are busts of Rene Robert Cavalier Sieur de la Salle and Cabeza de Vaca. Directly underneath this is the cattle brand of the de Leon’s, an ‘E’ interconnected with a ‘J.’
The square’s history as a graveyard was finally recognized in 1947, with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas erecting a monument dedicated to the memories of the Texas soldiers and pioneer families buried here. Curiously, nothing in the square memorializes the victims of the cholera epidemic of 1846, and there is no indication of where the mass graves of victims may have been. Something to speculate on as you somberly wander about, reading the monuments, gazing at the windmill through the chain link fence.
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