TEXARKANA, Texas - The Texarkana Museums System's next Twilight Tour returns to Rose Hill Cemetery this Saturday night with new living history characters bringing the past to life.
Starting at 8:30 p.m., this tour adds six more performances. Characters portrayed previously will have new scripts, and thus new tales to tell about Texarkana history.
"Even if you attended the Rose Hill Cemetery Tour in the past, this one will feel new," said TMS Curator Jamie Simmons in a statement. "There are so many stories to be told in this cemetery. We will definitely be able to include new performances every time we offer a tour."
Billed as "The Talking Dead," this tour both details the history of the Texas-side cemetery and introduces attendees to Texarkana residents such as Norman Whitaker, who was born in the Ace of Clubs House in the late 19th century. Another performance focuses on the 1882 Paragon Saloon fire.
Volunteers perform as these characters throughout the tour. Look for nine characters to be portrayed along the Rose Hill tour route. The TMS has dedicated the first Saturday of each month to conducting these tours at a historic Texarkana cemetery.
In an interview, Simmons said a couple of favorite characters return, too. She points out the Whitaker family were the second occupants at the Ace of Clubs, and almost all of them are buried at Rose Hill.
"We're going to kind of take that opportunity to not only give a little information about the Ace of Clubs House that's not normally a part of the tour, but also to kind of speak to that time period we've been skipping over, the 1890s," she said.
One performance will involve the Otis Henry monument at Rose Hill, but this time the story takes his mother's point of view. Henry was the first soldier from Bowie County to die in World War I, but he's known for the large monument his mother had made for his grave site, Simmons said.
"It has four sculptures on it. It's a huge, marble monument," she said.
Another new character is Ed Carter.
"Who was part of one of the Pioneer units during World War I, which were African-American units," Simmons said.
The Paragon Saloon fire will be represented by a character who represents the saloon itself. It won't be a specific person, but rather a representative, fitting for the mass grave at Rose Hill for victims of the fire, which was in downtown Texarkana along Broad Street.
"None of them were identified. There were some assumptions made about some of the remains must have been this person because we think they were there," Simmons said. "We just don't know who those people were."
Hence, they want to tell the story from a more generalized viewpoint. Because remains could not be identified, the community decided to bury them together in a mass grave, Simmons explained.
"It really is an interesting story about a tragedy," the curator said.
Simmons said parking won't be allowed in the cemetery, so attendees are advised to call the TMS to get directions for parking.
(Tickets: $15 per person, or $10 for TMS members. Required advance ticket purchase can be done at TexarkanaMuseums.org/Events, or call 903-793-4831 for more information. Rose Hill Cemetery is located on Lelia Street at the intersection with Phenie Avenue.)