| Comment: | August Mumme was born September 9, 1851. August is rumored to have fallen in with the wrong type of friends and became involved in cattle rustling. Some say he was murdered by three of his associates after a dispute. He was 27 years old at the time.
August was buried in the Quhi, Texas cemetery in a grave which faced South rather than the customary East. His tombstone was inscribed in German and it listed the initials of the three people who were reported to be the ones who killed him.
German & the English Translation
of August Mumme's Tombstone
Bekannter Hand
J.M. M.G. G.W.
Bin ich todt? O nein, ihr
Lieben. Oben stromt
das Leben frei. Aller
Todt ist drunten blieben,
Alles Starben ist vorbei!
Wollt ihr wissen wie es
geht? Kommet hoher,
Kommt und seht.
Murdered by
the hand of someone I knew
J.M. M.G. G.W.
Am I dead? Oh no, you
dear ones. Here above life
goes on. All
Death remained there below,
All dying is over!
Would you like to know how it
is? Come up higher,
Come and see."
From then directory of the "Bethlehem Lutheran Cemetery" we read
"There is one very unusual burial, that of August Mumme, my ggguncle (Row 7, No. 87). He is buried across a road that runs through the far side of the cemetery, and his grave is situated on a north-south axis, rather than the traditional east-west orientation. There are several stories regarding his death. The one handed down in my family is something to the effect that as a young man August got involved with a band of local cattle rustlers. After some time, he became apprehensive of his involvement, and resolved to turn his cohorts in to the authorities. Before he could do so, he was murdered by his colleagues. An inscription in German on his tombstone says he was murdered at the hands of his acquaintances, and three sets of initials are inscribed. Other versions of the story are that August turned outlaw and was killed in the act of cattle rustling by his more upright neighbors. My grandfather told me that regardless of the circumstances of his death, his murder caused very hard feelings in his home community of New Fountain and that the then minister of the church there refused to bury him. The family then applied to Bethlehem Lutheran Church, whose minister agreed to bury him, but only set apart from the main body of the church cemetery." |
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