Established in 1839 with victims of nine yellow fever epidemics and the 1900 hurricane, plus a child poisoner buried in the same plot as her victims
4100 Broadway Ave, Galveston, TX 77550
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Cemetery grounds are free to visit; ghost tours start at approximately $29.99
Access
Limited Access
Historic cemetery grounds with uneven terrain, raised grave markers, and brick walkways
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1839 · National Register of Historic Places · Yellow Fever Epidemic Casualties · Galveston 1900 Hurricane Victims · Texas Republic Founders · Galveston City Founders
The Old City Cemetery was established in 1839 in the same year Galveston was incorporated, making it coeval with the city. It forms the northeastern portion of the Broadway Cemetery Historic District, a six-block complex bounded by Broadway Avenue, Avenue L, 43rd Street, and 40th Street, covering 15.27 acres with approximately 6,000 total burials across seven individual cemeteries. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 13, 2014.
Galveston experienced nine yellow fever epidemics between 1839 and 1867. The disease killed in waves — in 1853, an estimated 523 people died and 60 percent of the city's population was affected. The 1867 epidemic was severe enough to trigger mass evacuations. These epidemics filled the Broadway cemeteries with victims who could not be treated with nineteenth-century medicine, and the Old City Cemetery in particular holds a large proportion of those dead. Some graves at the Old City Cemetery are three bodies deep, the result of grade elevations over the twentieth century that required coffins to be stacked.
Among the notable figures interred in the district are Michel Branamour Menard (1805–1856), the founder of Galveston; George Childress (1804–1841), primary author of the Texas Declaration of Independence; and John Melville Allen, the city's first mayor. The cemetery also holds victims of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which killed more than 6,000 people across the island.
The most cited individual case in the Old City Cemetery is Elize Roemer Alberti. On December 4, 1894, Alberti administered morphine-laced wine to four of her six children — Willie, Dora, Ella, and Lizzie — in the kitchen of her Galveston home. All four died. A fifth child, Emma, was resuscitated at the hospital; a sixth, Wilhelmina, was in another room and escaped. Alberti was institutionalized at the San Antonio Asylum, later returned to Galveston, and died by suicide. She is buried in the same plot as the four children she killed — described in cemetery records as one of very few cases where a perpetrator of familial homicide shares a burial site with the victims.
Sources
The Old City Cemetery's paranormal reputation rests almost entirely on its documented history rather than on specific witnessed phenomena. Ghost City Tours notes that there are no extensively documented reports of ghost sightings at the site, though paranormal investigation groups have conducted sessions here based on the density of traumatic deaths represented in the burial record.
The two most-cited figures in local ghost-tour narrative are Elize Roemer Alberti and Thomas Nicaragua Smith. Alberti, who poisoned four of her children with morphine-laced wine on December 4, 1894, and was subsequently institutionalized before dying by suicide, occupies the same burial plot as her victims. The shared grave — killer and killed, in the same ground — is presented on tours as the cemetery's most singular dark-historical feature.
Thomas Nicaragua Smith is described in ghost-tour accounts as a Confederate Army deserter who was executed, his restless spirit said to move through the older sections of the cemetery. Details about the nature and date of his execution circulate in tour operator materials.
The broader context of the cemetery — its nine yellow fever epidemics, its 1900 hurricane casualties, its stacked burials three bodies deep in sections where grade changes required coffins to be layered — creates an environment where the volume of traumatic death is itself the story. Whether or not apparitions have been observed here, the Broadway Cemetery District holds a documented record of mass mortality that is unusual even among historic Gulf Coast burial grounds.
Notable Entities
The six-block Broadway Cemetery District is publicly accessible during daylight hours. The Old City Cemetery occupies the northeastern corner, holding approximately 1,500 interments including yellow fever epidemic victims, 1900 hurricane casualties, Civil War soldiers, and the founders of the city of Galveston. The grave of Michel Branamour Menard, who founded Galveston in 1836, is here.
Ghost City Tours offers a 90-minute nighttime walking tour of the Old City Cemetery, rated 4.9 stars, covering the Alberti child murders, the execution of Thomas Nicaragua Smith, yellow fever mass burials, and 1900 hurricane casualties. Tour starts at approximately $29.99.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPGalveston, TX
The Broadway Cemetery complex in Galveston encompasses seven distinct historic burial grounds established between 1839 and 1939, collectively containing an estimated 36,000 or more burials. The complex includes sections dedicated to victims of the 1900 Great Storm — the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, which killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people in Galveston — as well as yellow fever epidemic victims, Confederate deserters executed by firing squad, and a documented 1894 murder case involving a woman who poisoned her four children.
Ferndale, CA
Established in 1868 on a steep hillside above Ferndale's Eel River Valley, the cemetery served the Victorian dairy-farming and lumber community through its founding generations. Its moss-covered stonework and rhododendron canopy drew the production crew for Stephen King's 1979 Salem's Lot miniseries, which used the site as the fictional Harmony Hill Cemetery.
Galveston, TX
The Broadway Cemetery Historic District is a seven-cemetery complex in midtown Galveston, established between 1839 and 1939. It holds an estimated 36,000 burials across six city blocks, with the actual body count far exceeding the approximately 12,000 visible markers due to three-layer interment created by twentieth-century grade raises.