The De La Zerda Historical Cemetery
The De La Zerda Cemetery is located on the high, east bank of the San Antonio River in the old community of Lodi in Wilson County, Texas. It rests near the Lod Ferry crossing, also known as Carvajal Crossing, on the San Antonio River. Both the Cemetery and the Lodi Ferry are located on property that was purchased by Nemencio De La Zerda, Sr. in 1837 from the De Arocha family, who were kin to his wife, Maria de Jesus Perez, a Canary Islander descendant. Nemencio Sr. served as a volunteer in Juan Seguin’s company of soldiers in Seguin’s 1839 Indian campaign. De La Zerda was a rancher and owned and operated a freight business.
It is difficult to tell when the De La Zerda Cemetery was first used for burial purposes. It most possibly served initially as a plot of land set aside on the property for family burials, and grew to be another family business endeavor. Some of those interred at the Cemetery appear to bear names of neighboring residents. Nemencio Sr. and his wife are most likely buried at the De La Zerda Cemetery, but there is only one marker labeled simply “ZERDA” to indicate any of several De La Zerdas with records of being buried there. Nemencio Sr. died in 1865 while both Nemencio II and Pedro Benito, two of his sons, were away serving the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Sadly, the young men returned to find their father gone forever.
There has been much continued vandalism, years of neglect, and natural forces over time that have left very little of what might have given us more information. Markers are missing; many, broken and scattered; and the few remaining are, for the most part, not legible. We are very blessed to have taken steps to better the Cemetery’s future with the City of Floresville, with Henrietta Turner, City Manager, at the helm of preservation efforts and the Floresville Economic DevelopmentCorporation, under the guidance of Ben Reed, along with a Rededication of the Historical Marker at the corner of Peach Stree and Goliad Road on November 2, 2019, on behalf of the Wilson County Historical Society who sponsored the Cemetery’s original Texas Historical Marker placed and dedicated in 2006. The marker had been heavily vandalized over the next 13 years at the Cemetery site. Thus, the new marker was placed on the street facing the entrance to the property.
The wonderful organization of historians devoted to preserving the history of Wilson County, the Wilson County Historical Society, under the leadership of LaJuana Newnam-Leus and the hard work of local history experts like Maurine Liles and Mark Cameron have brought a new future for the “little Cemetery that could.” The Friends of the De La Zerda Cemetery is a non-profit group dedicated to maintaining, preserving, and ultimately, restoring and adding to the beauty and history of an important part of Tejano history in South Texas. We hope to conduct fund raising efforts through sales of publications and fun events in order to build a strong future of perpetual care for this sacred, historical ground, the De La Zerda Cemetery.
