By J.B. Smith

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Somewhere at picturesque Fort Fisher Park lie the bones of an ex-slave who became a Waco City Councilman. Somewhere nearby lies the father of the founder of Dr Pepper Co. And somewhere else is the man who murdered vitriolic Texas journalist William Cowper Brann.

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Cemetery map

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See a 1968 map and gravestone registry from the relocation.

SLIDE SHOWS

Richard Thompson takes bones from museum expansion site / July 19, 2007

American Archaeology Group photos of grave excavations / March 2008

COMPLETE COVERAGE

• 07-21-09  Waco City Council to consider 2 downtown TIF projects tonight 
• 07-20-09  Waco City Council to consider doling out more money for excavation work near Ranger museum 
• 05-12-09  National Park Service wants historic cemetery designation and other changes around Waco's Texas Ranger Museum 
• 12-16-08  Waco City Council to decide whether to spend another nearly $500,000 for Rangers Museum work 
• 10-29-08  Cemetery 'debacle' at Ranger Museum site will bring about new legislation, lawmaker says 
• 10-08-08  City of Waco countersues archaeological firm in Texas Ranger Museum project 
• 09-23-08  State legislator tours burial site at Texas Ranger Museum expansion 
• 09-08-08  Political charges fly over graveyard dig at Ranger Museum 
• 09-06-08  State calls inquiry on graves at Ranger museum site 
• 09-05-08  State funeral hearing's focus shifts to graves at Texas Ranger Museum expansion 
• 09-04-08  State agency hearing in Waco today on families' access to graves 
• 05-07-08  City OKs spending up to $350,000 to dig beneath graves for water line to museum 
• 05-06-08  Letting First Street Cemetery dead rest in peace will come at a cost, city leaders say 
• 04-27-08  Descendants of First Street Cemetery dead plea for peace at long last 
• 04-02-08  Museum grounds may be re-dedicated as old cemetery 
• 03-23-08  DEAD WRONG: Bad assumptions, ignorance played havoc with old city cemetery 
• 03-08-08  Firm says city mismanaged burial site at Ranger museum 
• 11-13-07  Grave concerns bedevil Texas Ranger Hall of Fame project 
• 08-06-07  Texas Ranger Museum gets OK to resume construction at site where bones were unearthed 
• 07-24-07  State officials scrutinizing loose human bones, ambitious museum plans 
• 07-20-07  Missing bones cause big beef for city, museum officials 
• 07-19-07  A bone to pick: Case of exposed skeletal remains 'gone awry' 

OPINION

• 04-03-08  Editorial: Re-dedicate old Waco cemetery 
• 03-25-08  Editorial: Solution, not blame needed at old cemetery 

In recent months it has become apparent that hundreds, if not thousands, of Wacoans lie under the Brazos River bottomland sand in that portion of First Street Cemetery supposedly cleared for the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum 40 years ago. For descendants of the dead, that discovery has aroused curiosity and sometimes outrage.

More than 160 remains have been discovered as part of the museum’s expansion, and recent news articles have presented evidence that the cemetery relocation project of 1968 moved gravestones but few graves. An archaeological team is working to exhume more bodies and prepare them for relocation so the city of Waco can build utility lines to the museum’s new buildings. The city is also getting bids on a proposal to install water lines by boring under some of the remaining bodies.

Once the work is done, the city will bury the remains in another cemetery and will likely rededicate most of Fort Fisher Park as a cemetery, City Manager Larry Groth said.

But Robin Evans, whose relative Samuel Forsgard was buried at First Street Cemetery, says the damage is already done, and she hates to see more graves dug up.

“I think what they have done is to absolutely abuse people who were buried in that cemetery,” she said. “They are desecrating grave sites.”

Forsgard, Waco’s first Swedish immigrant and well-known as a confectioner and Civil War veteran, was buried in the eastern section of First Street Cemetery, which was cleared with a judge’s permission in 1968. The Confederate marker at his grave site was moved to the western side, which the city continues to maintain as a cemetery.

Evans said her family was led to believe by city officials during the relocation project that the whole grave would be moved. But in 2002, before the dedication of a historic marker at Forsgard’s grave, she heard someone suggest that there might not be a body beneath the stone — a suspicion recent news only strengthens.

Nagging doubts

Recent publicity over the graves has also sowed doubt in the mind of Rusty Wooldridge, a Waco native who now lives in Overland Park, Kan. Years ago at First Street Cemetery, he discovered the grave of his grandfather’s older brother, Oscar Reesing, who died in 1888 at the age of 7.

Now he wonders if the grave or just the stone was moved. The city’s survey of graves in 1968 doesn’t list Reesing.

He said he hopes the city will disturb the remaining graves as little as possible.

“Unless there’s some kind of overwhelming need, why disturb those graves?” he said. “Once that grave was put there it was meant to stay there.”

He said he’s glad to hear of the proposal to rededicate the cemetery.

“I think that’s a smart thing to do,” he said.

If the cemetery is rededicated, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson hopes to attend the ceremony. He wants to pay respect to an ancestor who is buried there and who has been an inspiration to him.

As a law student at the University of Texas in Austin in the mid-1980s, Jefferson began researching his family roots. The San Antonio native learned some of his family came from Waco. Further research revealed that his great-great-great-grandfather was Shedrick Willis, a blacksmith and former slave who became a two-term Waco City Councilman and mayor pro-tem.

“It’s one of those moments in life,” he said. “You wonder about slavery, and then you open a book and there it is: your own ancestor.”

According to an obituary for Willis in the Sept. 7, 1903, Waco Times-Herald, “Shed Willis,” who died at age 86, had been a resident of Waco since 1855 — just a few years after its founding.

Before the Civil War, Willis belonged to District Judge N.W. Battle, an irony not lost on Jefferson, the state’s first black chief justice. In speeches, Jefferson often talks of both Shedrick Willis and Judge Battle, expressing admiration for both.

Although Battle was a slaveholder, he made an important ruling before the Civil War that a free man could not sell himself into slavery to satisfy a debt.

“That was a pretty gutsy decision, and probably unpopular at that time,” Jefferson said. “The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and was affirmed by the Supreme Court. After the war, he gave a speech in which he said, ‘We’ve got to recognize the rights of the newly freed slave.’ ”

Jefferson said Battle helped Shedrick Willis in his run for city council in Reconstruction-era Waco and was an eloquent opponent of mob violence during that chaotic time.

The stone for Shedrick Willis has been lost, and the site of his grave is unknown. Jefferson said he learned about the First Street Cemetery situation when he visited Baylor Law School recently to give a speech.

“That fascinates me,” he said. “I’d be curious to find out more about it.”

Jefferson isn’t the only one to rediscover a First Street ancestor.

Carol Selander didn’t even know she had ancestors in the Waco area when she moved here in 1990, having lived in Salt Lake City and Savannah, Ga. All she knew is that her family had some roots in Texas.

A genealogy enthusiast, she went from county to county, looking at courthouse records for a clue. Then, in 1996, she discovered that her great-great-great-grandparents were buried at First Street Cemetery.

Daniel Moore, a blacksmith and former Coryell County treasurer, was buried there in 1873, followed by his wife, Elizabeth, five years later.

Selander, who now leads the Family History Center as a ministry of the local Mormon church, said she was elated to find the gravestones at First Street.

But even then, a local cemetery historian told her that the gravestones were probably relocated to make way for the Texas Ranger Museum.

“I was upset when I found they just built over the bodies, with no attempt to move them,” she said. “I believe the spirit goes on after death, and it’s just a body, but it upset me, the fact that someone would do something like that. I’m more dumbfounded than anything.”

It’s unclear whether the museum itself was built atop graves, or whether the graves there were among the few that city officials from the time remember moving.

At any rate, a grave inventory from 1968 indicates that Selander’s ancestors were already in the western side of the cemetery.

Selander said it’s not realistic to abandon the new buildings, but she said the city shouldn’t plan any more expansions in the graveyard area.

Brad Willis, a Waco dentist and history buff, has been researching the cemetery since he heard the news last summer of bones being discovered at Fort Fisher Park. He shared his findings with American Archaeology, the firm that was doing the bone work but was fired a few months ago.

“When I saw the building going up, it bothered me,” he said of the museum expansion. “What right do we have in 2008 to make the decision for people in the 19th and early 20th century, to say that we’re going to put a building on top of your grave site? What right do we have to erase history?”

Willis said he would like the city to install informational signs at Fort Fisher, including maps showing the approximate locations of bodies in the cemetery. He said the roads built to accommodate a former RV park should be removed.

Willis said he’s particularly disturbed by the small garage that was built behind the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum. The 1968 city survey shows at least three graves in the footprint of that building, including the grave of Tedell Reese, a World War II veteran who died in 1960.

A former Waco city official has said that a skull was found during the construction of that building but was simply put back in place.

“That building should come down as quickly as possible,” Willis said. “The foundation should be jackhammered and they should plant grass there. There are human beings under there.”

Willis said the issue at Fort Fisher is the community’s respect for the dead.

“For some people who may never have had their name in the paper, who weren’t the queen of the Cotton Palace, those stones are symbolic of the lives of individuals who lived here, the pioneers of Waco,” he said. “It’s a matter of respect for human beings, whether they’re rich or poor.”

jbsmith@wacotrib.com

757-5752