Concordia Cemetery

For over 100 years Concordia Cemetery has played an important role in El Paso. The rich, the poor, the famous, the notorious: all have a resting place here. The cemetery had its beginnings as a ranch settled by pioneer Hugh Stephenson and his wife Juana Maria Ascarate. Between 1930 and 1940 the settlement came to be known as Concordia, named after the Missouri town in which Stephenson was raised. Born in Kentucky, Stephenson arrived in the area around 1824 and was one of the first Anglo-American settlers. A hunter and trapper, he later became a trader with mining interests in Mexico. There he met his wife, the daughter of wealthy landowners. In 1854, a chapel and cemetery were built at the Stephensons' ranch. The chapel was named "San Jose de Concordia el Alto." On February 6, 1856, a pet deer gored Juana Ascarate Stephenson, and she became the first person to be buried in the Concordia Cemetery. Stephenson lost his land after the Civil War, but his son-in-law, Albert H. French, purchased the Concordia property at a federal marshal's sale in 1867. French sold each of the Stephenson's heirs an equal portion of the property for a dollar. By the 1880s, various groups interested in establishing cemeteries were contacting the heirs. The city of El Paso bought its first part of the cemetery in 1882 as a burial ground for paupers. By the 1890s, sections had been purchased by different groups and were designated Jesuit, Catholic, Masonic, Jewish, Black, Chinese, military, city, county and other ethnic and social groups. Today, Concordia has about 65,000 individual graves. Historian Dena Hirsch refers to Concordia Cemetery as "a collection of privately owned, publicly owned, and non-owned burial lands" consisting of 54 acres. Thus, no one organization or person accepts responsibility for maintaining Concordia.