The Old Kessler Cemetery
A quiet link to the pioneer era of Buchanan County, beside Becks Branch.
Bookended by two Josephs
The Old Kessler Cemetery was established as holy ground for the German immigrant congregation of the Kessler Settlement, and it remains a direct physical link to the pioneer era of Buchanan County. Its history is bookended by two men. Joseph Wiedmaier, a weaver, was the first burial, on October 2, 1849. The burial of Joseph M. Gerstner in 1923 was the last.
At least seven Civil War veterans rest here, including Wunibald Kessler and Jacob Wiedmaier, who were both killed in the conflict. In the words of the cemetery’s historian, they are “all whom deserve our respect for their sacrifice.”
Men, women and children of every age are buried here, from infants just a day old to elders such as 88-year-old Michael Scanlon.
Born together in 1847
The cemetery was never a stand-alone landmark. It was created for the “purpose of a Catholic Church and a Cemetery” through Joseph and Louisa Kessler’s land donation of 1847. The five-acre tract was once busy with the life of the Church of the Holy Savior, Jesus Christ, a log building that stood beside the burial ground.
The church served the congregation only until about 1850, but the cemetery kept growing as the community’s sacred center. The site shows the close bond between faith and family here. As Tim Wiedmaier’s book on the site’s history observes:
“Sebastian and Scholastika [Kessler] may have settled right here on this land.”Tim Wiedmaier
Their descendants carried that legacy forward by consecrating the ground for the whole settlement.
Beside Becks Branch
Kessler Cemetery doesn’t sit on a hilltop, as many pioneer burial grounds do. Its graves lie in the woods about twenty feet from Becks Branch, a small creek that winds through the countryside outside Easton. The Kesslers and their neighbors would have known it well, and the five acres Joseph and Maria Louisa Kessler gave for their church and cemetery in 1847 lie along its banks.
Being so close to the water shaped the cemetery’s story. When the access road was abandoned and the grounds were left to nature, the trees and undergrowth of the creek bottom closed over the stones. Today the sound of Becks Branch is part of what makes the site so peaceful, a quiet place in the woods where the settlement’s pioneers have rested for more than 170 years.
Overlooked, landlocked and “almost” forgotten
The site’s decline began as the local population moved toward the growing villages of Easton and Hurlingen. In late 1896, The Catholic Tribune reported that families including the McAlarneys, Fishers and Wallers were making “arrangements to remove their dead from the old to the new cemetery” in Easton.
Sometime after 1925 the original access road was officially abandoned. For nearly a century the site slowly returned to nature. When modern restoration began, it was badly neglected:
“Stones were buried, broken, knocked over and crumbling.”
Some markers had weathered until they could not be read at all.
Restoring what was nearly lost
The modern preservation of Old Kessler Cemetery is a story of renewed devotion. In 2002, local Boy Scouts and St. Joseph Church parishioners cleared and restored the grounds, including installing a shadow box for Jacob Wiedmaier’s military records. Over the following years, age and vandalism took the cemetery back to ruins.
In 2008, descendant Tim Wiedmaier went looking for his great-great-great-grandfather’s headstone and found the neglected cemetery. It took him three tries to reach it. He gathered his research into a self-made, self-printed book, Old Kessler Cemetery, and that book started the modern restoration. Around 2017, several of his cousins whom he had never met reached out wanting to help. Together they started a grassroots movement of descendants and volunteers, including Michael Fisher as caretaker and treasurer and Mary Bray, who was one of the first to clear brush and saw that the stones needed professional help.
That movement led to a 2019 fundraising campaign, which drew donations from about 30 people in several states and paid for professional repairs. Jacob’s Ladder Cemetery Restoration Specialists straightened, repaired and reset about 40 stone tablets. The restored cemetery was rededicated in November 2019.
The mission continues: not only to clean the grounds, but to secure permanent access and perpetual care.
“As long as people don’t forget, it will survive!”
The grounds today
