We are direct descendants of those buried at the Eli Jackson Cemetery.

We wholeheartedly disapprove and reject any and all claims of ownership and attempts to request or acquire ownership of the cemetery by Diana Cardenas and any cemetery organization she represents for the reasons stated below. Note that historical context has been provided.

1. The cemetery has no legal owner. The last owner was Eli Jackson. He died intestate in 1911. 

2. Diana Cardenas filed an invalid deed (file #965713) for the cemetery property with the Hidalgo County in 2001. This document claimed to close the cemetery, rename it the Eli Jackson Cardenas Cemetery and mandate only descendants of Adela Jackson, the granddaughter of Eli Jackson, be allowed to be buried there. Family members vehemently rejected this and continued to visit and maintain the cemetery, despite the No Trespassing signs Diana Cardenas repeatedly installed. 

3. History of the Eli Jackson Cemetery: In 1857, Matilda and Nathaniel Jackson, a black slave woman and her white plantation owner husband, and their mixed race adult children and grandchildren settled in the Rio Grande Valley. These pioneers were farmers and ranchers, active in local politics, conductors of the Underground Slave Pathways into Mexico, and our ancestors.

Eli (1829-1911), their son, was a landowner and served as a Hidalgo County Commissioner. He inherited land from his father and purchased several tracts of land from his siblings, relatives and neighbors. His lands were bordered by his brother Martin's on one side and his niece Minerva Singleterry Brewster's on the other.  Subsequently, Minerva Singleterry Brewster sold part of her tract of land to her Uncle Eli. It is likely this is when Eli's and Minerva's two family ranch cemeteries merged into the cemetery as we know it today. 

The earliest graves, no longer marked, are believed to be that of Nathaniel Jackson who died in 1865, and of Matilda who died between 1877 and 1800 (exact date unknown). The oldest existing marker is George Brewster (1899), the son of Minerva Singleterry and Dr. William Brewster and the great grandson of the former slave Matilda.  Other Singleterry and Brewster graves are clustered on the East side of the cemetery. There is no marker for Eli and none for his wives nor children. There is also no documentation of the day that Eli was buried here, i.e., no death certificate, newspaper article, or obituary.

Known by many names through time and in various documentations through the more than 150 years of its existence, the cemetery was officially named the Eli Jackson Brewster Cemetery by Diana Cardenas, Eli's great granddaughter, in 2004 when submitting the Texas Historical Commission Historic Cemetery Designation Application and to honor her grandmother, Adela Jackson Reyna.

4. Without a valid deed, all descendants have a claim and/or stake to and/or on the cemetery. Point in fact, there are living direct descendants of Eli who have a more direct claim to the property by virtue of birth order and age than the Cardenas branch of the family. 

5. Over the years, many people from multiple branches of the family have cared for this cemetery. It has been cleaned, cleared, updated, and maintained by many descendants - some in person and some from far away through monetary donations. It has been overgrown and cleared several times.  Descendants across the country have rallied and invested in this little plot of land that continues to be a lodestone to so many. 

There are at least three distinct Cemetery Associations. One of note is the Eli Jackson Brewster Cemetery Preservation Association. It represents many of the undersigned and is made up of relatives from across the county who wish to help local relatives clean and maintain the cemetery. This Association has worked with the county to install a drainage culvert and street egress, obtained a U. S. Postal address and inclusion into the county's 9-1-1 system, had aggressive bees professionally relocated (and not killed), has traced the genealogy of each of the 108 documented burials, has helped local historians conduct a ground penetrating radar study and more.

Descendants have banded together through lawsuits and activism to fight the federal wall which abuts the cemetery's back property line and descendants continue to advocate for our family cemetery. 

6. In summary, the graves of our ancestors are in the Eli Jackson Cemetery, and Diana Cardenas does not legally own it. 

If Diana Cardenas is allowed to own the cemetery, change the name, declare it closed to public visitors, place restrictions on its use, and only allow Cardenas family to be buried here, it will make the hard work, sweat and love of so very many people over the past hundred plus years meaningless and deprive current and future generations of descendants their rights to continue using, visiting, and caring for the cemetery.

A courtroom is where the fate of this beloved and beleaguered cemetery will be decided. We do not think Eli and Minerva ever envisioned it would come to this.

We the undersigned implore this court to decline any ownership or conservatorship requests by Diana Cardenas and/or the association she represents.