MARTINDALE, Texas (KXAN) – To Cindy Woolley, the ground radar machine looked like a lawnmower. She watched as the surveyor pushed it across the weedy, uneven ground of Crayton-Spruill Cemetery. Each time the machine revealed a set of buried human bones, the operator marked it, pushing a little pink flag into the ground.
In all, the 2023 radar survey revealed 29 graves. Many of them likely the final resting places of people enslaved by one of the area’s original landowners, John Crayton, and his family, according to Woolley and court records. They were buried up to 150 years ago. Woolley, a descendant of Crayton, and her family commissioned the survey to get a better understanding of what lies beneath the historic plot of land.
The slaves’ graves are unmarked because, according to local lore, about 100 years ago, the Ku Klux Klan stormed through, ripped out the slaves’ headstones and threw the markers into a nearby ravine and river.
Now, a contingent of Martindale residents say the cemetery is under threat again, this time by a major construction project.
Crayton-Spruill Cemetery, the little graveyard tucked behind arching boxelder and elm trees, has become central to the small town’s battle over a $6.7 million federal-grant-funded road and drainage endeavor. Construction, if it ever happens, would remake nearby NW River Road, one of Martindale’s primary arteries connecting its single-street downtown with homes and businesses to the northwest.
Woolley, who doesn’t live in Martindale, said she would prefer to stay out of the “drama.”
“I just have an interest in my family being buried here,” she said.
Regardless of Woolley’s desire to stay out of it, the cemetery sits at the terminal end of a proposed drainage culvert that would send storm water into a ravine at the graveyard’s edge, within feet of graves.
In July, the Texas Historical Commission sent a letter to the city, causing work to be halted until questions about the cemetery’s ownership and long-term flood protection were resolved.
The disagreements over how, and whether, to move forward have caused a rift among locals.
Those in favor of the project argue the grant funds give the city a chance to make vital improvements, which the city couldn’t otherwise afford, to a decrepit and flood-prone road that has needed repeated repairs after storms. Concerns over potential damage to the cemetery are overblown, they say, and shouldn’t derail such a important civic improvement. Furthermore, ending the project now could cause a complicated grant unwinding process and leave Martindale on the hook for more than $1 million in grant funds already spent – a sum that could bankrupt the city, according to state records and the town’s mayor, Laura Sanchez Fowler.
Meanwhile, opponents of the project say construction will disturb the graves of enslaved people – a moral injustice that transcends the importance of fixing a road and drainage issue – and the plan to dump storm water into the cemetery-adjacent ravine would exacerbate erosion and damage graves. On top of that, the city opted against alternative project plans that wouldn’t have affected the cemetery.
The project has been years in the making, with three different Martindale mayors overseeing it, with Fowler taking the helm in May.
At a city council meeting in late July, two months into her term, everything came to a head when a measure to finally cancel the project came up for a vote.
City Council meeting
From Fowler’s perspective, the project had been delayed too long. With a lawsuit over ownership of the cemetery pending in court, the Historical Commission’s request to pause construction would inevitably push the timetable for completion past critical deadlines in December 2026 and January 2027.
“We have finally got to a point where the hurdles are so high,” Fowler told KXAN in an interview. “I don’t see a path where we can get through the grant on time and within the budget that we have available to do it.”
Aside from the timeline obstacle, she also had ethical concerns about construction being done right up to the edge of the graveyard and the city becoming adversarial toward the descendants of the town’s founders.
“It felt wrong because there are slaves that are buried there. We have a whole history of the KKK coming through and defiling the graves,” Fowler said. “It doesn’t feel right.”
Martindale’s grant funds originates from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a pot of $4.2 billion sent to Texas in 2019 after the devastation of 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. That tranche of federal funds, called Community Development Block Grant – Mitigation funds, is administered by the Texas General Land Office, or GLO, according to the agency.
Eligible projects can include, but aren’t limited to, “natural and green infrastructure, public facilities, housing, buyouts or acquisition, activities designed to relocate families outside of floodplains, and public service activities,” according to GLO.
In its grant management plan, the city said the project would “increase resilience to disasters and reduce or eliminate the long-term risk of loss of life, injury, damage to and loss of property, and suffering and hardship, by lessening the impact of future disasters.”
The proposition of cancelling such a substantial grant hasn’t sat well with some in the city, including City Council Member Mike McClabb.
At the July hearing, when the agenda item came up to cancel the grant, McClabb spoke up for the contingent that wants to see the project completed.
“It is not fair for a half dozen people in this town to try to stop this project that benefits everybody in this city,” McClabb said at the meeting. “What is the rush to stop this grant? … What is the rush to kill it right now?”
The hearing grew contentious, with Fowler and McClabb raising their voices.
“Mike, you need to stop …” Fowler said, before McClabb verbally cut her off.
“No, no. I am an elected official, and I can say what I want to say,” McClabb responded.
The two traded words, speaking over each other, with Fowler accusing McClabb of “browbeating” people and not allowing others to speak. At one point, Fowler called a city policeman over, nearly requesting McClabb be tossed from the meeting.
“You are going to throw me out — for what?” McClabb responded.
McClabb stayed, and the council voted to table the motion to cancel the grant until the city could make further inquiries with the GLO and meet with the project engineers and attorneys involved.
The heated meeting underscores how divisive the project has become.
Two locals, Patricia Matthews and her husband Quintin Matthews, have been at the forefront of opposition to the project.
Local opposition
“What we are trying to stop is bulldozers coming in and disturbing the ground and erosion from the flood waters they are planning to drop in here and washing away someone’s sacred burial place,” Patricia told KXAN in an interview at the graveyard.
Opposition to the project was small at first, but grew after Patricia strung up a sign at the cemetery gate publicizing the potential impact of construction.
From Patricia and Quintin Matthews’ perspective, the whole ordeal could have been avoided if the city had chosen an alternative design — there were two other drainage routes that could have bypassed the cemetery. But, the couple said, previous city leadership wanted NW River Road fixed, so they opted for a project that would run the drainage system under the street, thus requiring the road to be rebuilt.
To the Matthews, the city has stretched the intended purpose of the federal mitigation grant funds to fit its desire to fix NW River Road.
In an 11-point complaint from December 2023 submitted to the city, Patricia laid out her concerns over what she described as false and misleading claims the city made in its grant application. The city overstated the impact of flood mitigation, sewer infrastructure benefits and how past flooding affected emergency vehicle traffic, among several other issues, according to the complaint.
The city rebutted every aspect of the complaint in a detailed 17-page response Fowler sent on July 17, concluding that “after full investigation, the City of Martindale did not find evidence of any intentional falsification or civil rights violations in our CDBG-MIT grant application or project execution.”
Former and current city leaders spoke with KXAN and offered their own rebuttals to those allegations and explained why the project should move forward.
‘Actually an improvement’
To former Martindale Mayor Kathrine Glaze, opposition to the project is less about the cemetery and more about not wanting construction nearby, and change.
The project, from Glaze’s standpoint, would benefit the cemetery.
“We are trying to save it,” Glaze said. “It’s actually an improvement, in the long run.”
Glaze, City Council Member Matthew McGovern and McClabb also met with KXAN at the cemetery.
The culvert, if rebuilt in the ravine, would help stop erosion on the side of the graveyard from storm water, McClabb said.
The city has followed the advice of engineering experts guiding the city, McGovern said, and they’ve been told the project wouldn’t affect graves.
“I defer to the experts, the engineer,” McGovern said. “It’s not up to the council or citizens to make the judgement. We have to defer to the experts.”
McGovern recused himself from voting on the issue because he lives on NW River Road within the construction zone, and his home is involved in eminent domain proceedings.
He also acknowledged his and Glaze’s personal association with the alternative options for drainage that the city did not choose.
As part of the grant process, the city provided three project options. One would have diverted floodwater between McGovern’s and his neighbor’s properties, and a second option would have diverted water through Glaze’s property, McGovern said.
Those two options raised significant concerns that caused the city to move on, McGovern said. For one, the storm water would be sent directly into the river at the level of the river, which would affect the property owner on the opposite bank by adding to the natural flow. By sending water directly into the river, or “floodway,” the other options would get the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, involved and potentially hitch up the project with red tape, he explained.
Because of those concerns, McGovern said, the engineers recommended sending the water into the ravine by the cemetery, which is out of the floodway and where the “water is naturally going.”
McClabb and others have also raised alarms over stopping the project because it could cause Martindale to have to pay back more than $1 million grant funds they’ve already used.
The GLO – while stressing HUD is in charge of funding and rules – said it has been providing technical assistance to Martindale with the goal of helping the city use the grant funds and stay in compliance with federal regulations. The feds can demand repayment if all documentation and steps taken aren’t “audit proof,” the GLO said.
“Our goal is to help communities like Martindale use the funds while avoiding any missteps that would result in repayment of funds to HUD,” a GLO spokesperson said in a statement. “It is an unfortunate fact that the bureaucracy and economic liabilities involved in using federal grant funds are major deterrents for many communities.”
McClabb said he hoped the city could get an extension on the 2026 grant deadline. He also wants the city to communicate with the Historical Commission and get all parties involved, including the engineers, together to discuss how to move forward.
A letter and a lawsuit
Though opposition to the project has been brewing for years, a July 9 letter from the Historical Commission officially halted work, according to Fowler.
The commission notes new information has become available showing the cemetery’s ownership is unresolved, and more than two dozen new graves were discovered by ground radar near the construction zone.
“This indicates that further archeological research and ground truthing would be required prior to any ground disturbance in the vicinity of the Crayton-Spruill Cemetery,” according to the letter.
After getting the letter, the city reached out to the Commission for clarification and got a stark response, Fowler said.
“They said … you are not allowed to do anything. Don’t pick up a shovel. Don’t continue to work on easement acquisitions. Don’t do anything until the lawsuit is complete with the cemetery and an actual owner is declared.”
Lawana Holland-Moore, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said problems similar to what Martindale is encountering with its road project are not uncommon across the country.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a privately funded nonprofit that works to save historic locations across the country. Holland-Moore works on the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, the largest historic preservation effort ever undertaken on behalf of Black historic sites, she said.
Many Black cemeteries in the South were essentially abandoned, Holland-Moore said, particularly after the “Great Migration,” when more than 6 million Black people left the South between 1910 and 1970.
Like in Martindale, struggles over cemeteries across the country have centered on questions of ownership and damage from storm water runoff, she said.
“You can’t make decisions based, you know, as to what to do with the cemetery or burial ground, without knowing who owns it or who is responsible for it,” Holland-Moore said. “The laws vary from city to city and state to state.”
To settle who rightly owns the Crayton-Spruill Cemetery, Cindy Woolley and the Crayton-Spruill Cemetery Association in February sued the City of San Marcos and the San Marcos Missionary Baptist Church, which no longer exists, according to the lawsuit.
Woolley is listed as the president and Quintin Matthews as the secretary treasurer of the Crayton-Spruill Cemetery Association, according to its 2024 public tax report.
The lawsuit lays out a history dating back to 1842, when John Crayton was deeded several thousand acres in the area. He sold 1,000 of those to George Martindale – the city’s namesake – in 1852. Twenty years later, Crayton deeded land to the San Marcos Missionary Baptist Church to be used for a cemetery for “whites and blacks,” according to the lawsuit.
“A stipulation was made that the church would always keep the portion of the land southwards from W. W. Spruill’s grave ‘to the mouth of the ravine emptying into the San Marcos River as a burial ground for colored persons,’” according to the lawsuit.
Woolley, a direct descendent of Crayton, took an interest in the history of the land in the 1980s. Back then, the graveyard was “severely overgrown,” so Woolley and family members cleared, weeded and began maintaining it, she said.
In 2002, the graveyard was designated a historical cemetery by the Texas Historical Association, and, in November of that year, Woolley and family members paid for a historic marker.
The city paid little interest in the cemetery for decades, Woolley said.
Then, in September 2023, she got a letter from the City of Martindale indicating its interest in purchasing cemetery land – a right of way, drainage easement or temporary construction easement – for the road project. The city offered almost $21,000 in “just compensation,” according to court records.
Three months after the city’s letter, Woolley officially formed nonprofit Crayton-Spruill Cemetery Association. In February of 2025, the lawsuit was filed in Caldwell County to clear up the title.
The interest and tussle of the cemetery surprised Woolley.
“I mean it’s been ignored all these years. Why now? “Woolley asked. “Why? Because of the project that they are wanting to push through,” Woolley added.