Landscape Information
The remnants of a private family-owned cemetery established by the African American Winters, Jackson, and Anthony families in the second half of the 19th century are located fifteen miles northeast of downtown San Antonio, Texas. Founded during a time when there was no public burial ground open to African Americans in San Antonio, the .66-acre Winters-Jackson cemetery was in use from at least 1876 to 1937. The cemetery formed part of a historic settlement established by formerly enslaved people who were able to buy land from their former masters and neighboring landowners following emancipation. According to interviews with descendants, the cemetery contained more than one-hundred graves. In 1986, the property owner disinterred 66 of the graves on site without permission from descendants or a legal permit and had them reinterred, with their respective grave markers, at the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in a mass grave. Among those reinterred was Buffalo Soldier Amos Jackson.
Today, only a portion of the original cedar gate post and barbed wire fence that once surrounded the cemetery still stands at the western border of the cemetery. The only other surface level finding that dates from the period of significance is a cut limestone marker at the northwest corner of the burial ground. Invasive vegetation of grasses and shrubs cover the rest of the flat ground plane. Archeological findings show that the 1986 disinterment was not successful in moving all the graves as human remains are still present. Nearby social institutions also founded by the Winters, Jackson, and Anthony families such as an African Methodist Episcopal Church and a school for African American children have since been removed. A restaurant and parking lot covers the original lane leading to the cemetery.
