Oakwood Cemetery

First, some background: Oakwood, which is just east of Interstate 35 and just south of the University of Texas UFCU Disch-Falk Field, doesn’t have quite the cast of characters that the Texas State Cemetery has, but it’s still a pretty impressive list. Among the Oakwood residents resting in peace are Alamo survivor Susanna Dickinson, writer and humorist John Henry Faulk, and Texas Govs. Elisha Pease, Oran Roberts, Oscar Branch Colquitt, Andrew Hamilton and James Hogg and his daughter Ima Hogg. (And no, despite what you might have heard, there was no Ura Hogg.) Also, there is John Hancock (the Texan who served in the U.S. House, not the famous autograph/insurance company guy).Last April, this newspaper reported on a delay in the chapel rehab project because of the November 2016 discovery of remains in the cemetery’s “Colored Grounds” section near the 1914 building.STAY ON TOP OF THE NEWS: Click here to sign up for our Breaking News emailsThe discovery set off a what-to-do process. A city report issued in April 2017 said African-American residents and others with ties to the nonwhite section of the cemetery favored exhuming the graves under the chapel and reburying them nearby, as opposed to leaving them in place under the refurbished chapel.“(They) feel that to leave the graves in place would perpetuate and condone the widespread practice throughout the United States of disrespecting the graves of African-Americans and other communities of color,” the report said. “If this chapel is to be used as a public space, people’s graves would unavoidably be walked over.”Tonja Walls-Davis, the city’s cemetery manager, now reports that the archaeological team has exhumed 39 sets of remains during the project. Most of them were fully intact, though unidentified, skeletons. Some were only “disarticulated bone fragments.” Included is one discovered under the chapel’s north wall during drilling to set piers.Walls-Davis reports that the exhumed remains have been sent to Texas State University’s Forensic Anthropology Center in San Marcos. At that facili... (MyStatesman.com)