While writing Cemetery Birding: An Unexpected Guide to Discovering Birds in Texas, I stumbled across many famous and infamous Texans. Their individual stories are part of the collective of each community they resided in and the state as a whole. They represent the many shifting ideas, social conflicts, changing power dynamics, triumphs and traumas that have paved the bump road of Texas’ long human history.
It had been my intention to include a Tombstone Tale that represented an individual for each cemetery listed in Cemetery Birding. However, the addition of those stories made the book too long and ultimately I removed them. Earlier this year I was at one of the cemeteries and I was thinking about the individual whose story I research and drafted, and thought- hmm- maybe I should do something with those.
So once a month (or so) I will post a tombstone tale that relates to one of the cemeteries. When you are out discovering the birds of that cemetery you can also look for the individuals mentioned in these blog posts. While I try to focus on well meaning people, I am not afraid to tell the stories of someone who might not be a “good person” by today’s standards. Many people are a matrix of sometimes conflicting values that it is all too easy to judge them with a twenty first century lens and get wrapped around the axel over one piece of that person’s life or actions. It is not for me to judge them as they lay beneath the earth in the shadow of their tombstone.The people in the tombstone tales can range from a school teacher, to a civic leader, to a plantation and slave owner, a cowboy, a murderer, writer, or naturalist. I discovered lots of Texas’ naturalist who helped raise the alarm about species and habitat destruction and how to conserve for future generations.
I will be in San Antonio soon and look forward to birding at the San Fernando Cemetery Number 1. You can look in the book to find out more about the birds and history of the delightful, historic cemetery. And while you are there look for…
Tombstone Tale: José Antonio Navarro (1795-1871) Navarro was born in San Antonio de Bexar into a predominate San Antonio family; his mother was from a Spanish nobility and his father was from Corsica. As a young man he educated himself about the law and later practiced in San Antonio. At the age of 30 he married Margarita de la Garza with whom he had seven children. He was elected to the state legislature of Coahuila and later he also served in the federal congress in Mexico City. When Stephen F. Austin arrived in Texas, they became friends and Navarro was supportive of the idea of Texas’ independence from Mexico. He was one of three Mexicans and one of two native born Texan signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
After Texas won its independence he served in the legislature and advocated for Tejano rights. He was the sole Tejano delegate at the Convention of 1845 and strongly favored annexation into the United States. Once the votes were cast, he stayed on in Austin to help write the Constitution of 1845. Interestingly, he later supported Texas secession from the union on the principles of state’s rights and in support of the institution of slavery. Like many Texans- he’s complicate. Always advocating for the rights of Hispanics, he was devastated to see those rights be further marginalized in the post Civil-War political and social climate.
The Texas Legislature honored him with naming Navarro County for him and designating the county seat as the town of Corsicana to honor his father’s home country of Corsica. The Navarro historic home can still be visited at the Casa Navarro State Historic Site in San Antonio. His papers are housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center of American History at the University of Texas in Austin. For more information- click here. I should note that he also has a headstone at the State Cemetery in Austin- that is a much longer story.
