About the Cemetery

The Antonio López Family Cemetery is located off County Road 201 in the rural ranching community of San José, TX, about 7 mi. southwest of Benavides. (Map) The cemetery is the resting place of José Antonio López (bap. June 14, 1830, d. Dec. 24, 1903), known as Antonio. Antonio, together with his first wife María de los Santos González (bap. Jun. 17, 1832, d. between 1878 and 1884), settled San José circa 1877.

According to Early Tejano Ranching: Daily Life at Ranchos San José and El Fresnillo by Andrés Sáenz (1999), “Antonio died the morning of December 24, 1903, of heart complications. In 1895… he had divided his land… [among] each of his seven children and… his wife…. Of each 28.75-acre parcel, a quarter acre was to provide for a gravesite; thus, two acres were set apart for a cemetery on the southwest corner of his property that is called the Antonio López Cemetery. His body rests there. Beside his gravestone stands a wooden grotto, which had been attached to an early wooden marker. The grotto contains the poem [noted below] behind a hinged glass door. His great-grandson Reynaldo, who has now passed away, kept a freshly written copy of the poem in the grotto. Now Reynaldo’s brother, Rodolfo, replaces the poem at the cemetery. Dominga [Peña, Antonio’s second wife,] died on May 18, 1922. She too is buried at the Antonio López Cemetery.”

Rodolfo passed January 26, 2016, and sadly, the wooden grotto and poem are gone. But the poem is thankfully preserved in Saenz’s book:

Aquí yace una existencia,
El que siete décadas tuvo,
Que la que a su lado estuvo,
Adolorida por su ausencia,
Rocoja el polvo y la esencia,
Que su espíritu contuvo.

Here lies an existence
That lasted seven decades.
May the one who he had by his side,
Grieved by his absence,
Pick up the dust and the essence
That his spirit contained.

In November 1963, Antonio’s grandson, Rosendo López, bought 1.75 acres adjacent to the cemetery from Flavio and Herlinda S. Canales, then formally donated that land to the cemetery via a deed of trust in June 1964. Sometime thereafter, Rosendo and several of his cousins and nephews got together to fence the land.

In 2017, current generations of López descendants began rallying support for a cemetery beautification project.

The cemetery received Historic Texas Cemetery designation from the Texas Historical Society in July 2018 and was approved for an official Texas historical marker in January 2019.

To learn more about the cemetery and its history, read the cemetery’s historical marker application.