A Community of the Past

In 2014 my wife and I wrote a book for Acadia Press entitled Images of America: San Antonio Cemeteries Historic District. On the east side of San Antonio are thirty-one cemeteries comprising approximately 103 acres. The area was first surveyed in 1853 and lots sold to the Alamo Masonic Lodge.Thousands of individuals have been buried there since that time, and although most burials are pre-1949, most of the cemeteries remain active today.

The book mentioned above was limited in scope because of editorial considerations. The present site is designed to (1) include additional information on people mentioned in the book, (2) inform the reader about some of those not included in the book, and (3) at times discuss individuals in cemeteries other than those in the Eastside Complex.

A view of San Antonio National Cemetery showing the graves of Major Hardie Voilland, his wife Aurora, and their son Raoul in the center. The couple's only child, Raoul was only twelve when he passed.

Karl Beck

Professor Karl Beck was born in Ilmenau, Thuringia, on 23 April 1850. After studying music, he enlisted in the 34^th Prussian regiment as a musician (oboist) at the age of sixteen. During the Franco-Prussian War he was taken prisoner. After the war he studied music at the conservatory in Leipzig. In 1875 he arrived at the Philadelphia Exposition as the leader of a military band and traveled throughout the country before returning to Germany. Mr. Beck worked with orchestras in Germany and France. In 1880 he became assistant leader of the Eden Theatre in Paris. That same year he moved near Bordeaux, until April 1884, when he returned to this country and was chosen to lead a musical festival in San Antonio. Afterward, he was elected leader of the Beethoven Maenerchor (a German men’s singing society) and soon formed Carl Beck’s Military Band which played at least weekly at locations such as Scholz’s and Muth’s gardens. Near the end of the nineteenth century he spent fifteen years in El Paso before returning to San Antonio shortly before his death on 2 October 1920.

Professor Beck was buried in San Antonio's City Cemetery # 4. Note the beautiful symbol of the Beethoven Maenerchor gracing the gravestone.