Oakwood Cemetery, originally called City Cemetery, is the oldest city-owned cemetery in Austin, Texas. Situated on a hill just east of I-35 that overlooks downtown Austin, just north of the Swedish Hill Historic District and south of Disch-Falk Field, the once-isolated site is now in the center of the city.
History
The Oakwood Cemetery Chapel
The cemetery was established in 1839. Its oldest currently-standing monument commemorates two victims of a Comanche attack who perished in 1842.
The cemetery was renamed Oakwood in 1907 per city ordinance. It spreads over 40 acres (160,000 m2), including an annex across Comal Street to the east established in 1914, and includes sections historically dedicated to the city's black, Latino, and Jewish populations. Paupers were historically buried in unmarked graves on the cemetery's south side. Graves without permanent markers were subject to reburial after a given period.
In 1914, the Oakwood Cemetery Mortuary Chapel was built on a design by Texas architect Charles Henry Page as a site for memorial services. The chapel was later renovated and remodeled in 1944 under the direction of local architect J. Roy White.[2]
The cemetery became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1972 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985; its annex was added on October 30, 2003. The view of the Texas State Capitol from Comal Street in the center of the cemetery became one of the Capitol View Corridors protected under state and local law from obstruction by tall buildings in 1983.[3] Despite its protected status, the cemetery had been subject to crime, vandalism, and decay for decades until significant restoration efforts began in the mid 2010s.
Richard Bache Jr. (1784–1848) - Representative for Galveston in the Senate of the Second Texas Legislature in 1847 and assisted in drawing up the Texas Constitution of 1845
Thomas N. Barnes - (1930–2003) Fourth Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force
Annie Webb Blanton - (1870–1945) – First woman elected to statewide office in Texas. Served as State Superintendent for Public Instruction (1919–22)
Rebecca Jane G. Fisher (1831–1926) - The only woman elected to the Texas Veterans Association and its last surviving member. The first woman to have her portrait hung in the Senate Chamber at the Texas Capitol.
Andrew Jackson Zilker (1858–1934) - Businessman, philanthropist and prominent local landowner who donated both Barton Springs and the land that would become Zilker Park to the City of Austin.
In addition, three victims of the unidentified serial killer dubbed the Servant Girl Annihilator are buried in Oakwood; Eula Phillips (1868-1885) and Susan Hancock (1840-1885), who were both murdered the night of December 24th, 1885; and Rebecca Ramey (1839-1909), who survived an earlier attack in which her daughter Mary was killed.
