Saint Joseph Cemetery

This cemetery has been recorded as a historic Texas cemetery by the Texas Historical Commission.  Its origins are traced to the Bureau of Peter Ignatz Wenzel on February 2, 1884.  Ignatz was a German immigrant who was among the first founders of New Braunfels, Texas and Comal Village.  Ignatz requested that he be buried on his land and that one acre surrounding his grave be set aside as a cemetery.  On March 3, 1884, his widow Anna Maria (Friesenhahn) Wenzel donated land for the cemetery to the Catholic Bishop of San Antonio.  In 1925 Ignatz descendants sold one half acre to the Catholic Bishop to enlarge the cemetery.  In 1948, Willie Wenzel donated .7 acre for the parking lot and driveway.  Except for a small number of hispanic laborers buried in the northwest corner, most of the early burials were either descendants of Ignatz and Anna Maria or of Anna's two brothers Andreas and Nocolas Friesenhahn, or of Anna's half brother Heinrich Syring.  The Wenzels and those other families resting on these sacred grounds possessed an unfaltering commitment to their religious beliefs as evidenced by the beautiful Saint Joseph's Chapel the erected nearby.