Memorial Square

Laid out in 1824 when Martin de Leon founded Victoria in the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas, this square was once the town’s oldest public burial ground. In its early years the cemetery included the block to the east, and many Victoria pioneers were interred here. Burials of soldiers in the Texas Revolution took place in 1836 and later. The cemetery was only occasionally used, however, until 1846, when a new city ordinance discouraged burials in family cemeteries, possibly to combat a cholera epidemic. Many who died were citizens, but some were soldiers under General Zachary Taylor, camped here en route to fight in the Mexican War. As the community grew, a larger plot, now Evergreen Cemetery, was purchased in 1850. Later, in the Civil War, Confederate soldiers were interred here, but after the war some members of the Federal Army of Occupation destroyed many headstones, so that today most gravesites are unknown. As burials here gradually ceased, the ground came to be used for other purposes and since 1899 has been designated Memorial Square, devoted to preserving monuments to Texas history and remembering Texas honored dead.

Victoria, Texas · United States