A 1941 Yankee Is Buried on Old Plantersville Road. On October 17, Montgomery Tells His Story Where He Lies.

Norman Branch pitched for Montgomery High School, then for the University of Texas, then for the New York Yankees. He is buried in the New Montgomery Cemetery, in the 500 block of Old Plantersville Road. On Saturday, October 17, someone will stand in that cemetery and tell his story in the first person.

That is the idea behind Voices from the Past, the Montgomery Historical Society's cemetery tour, now in its seventh year. Local reenactors in period clothes take on the lives of pioneers, settlers, statesmen and pioneer women buried in two of the city's oldest graveyards. Each script is written from that person's life. The society notes that descendants of many of them still live in Montgomery.

The tour runs from noon to 3 p.m. It is free.

The two stops

The Old Methodist "Churchyard" Cemetery, founded in 1838, sits at Pond Street and Eva Street, which is Highway 105 through town. It is older than Texas statehood by seven years.

The New Montgomery Cemetery, founded in 1868, is in the 500 block of Old Plantersville Road. "New" is relative. It has been there 158 years.

Two of this year's voices

Branch's major league record is short and real. Baseball-Reference lists 37 games over the 1941 and 1942 seasons, five wins, two losses and a 3.73 earned run average. His first game was May 5, 1941, against Detroit: two innings, no hits. The 1941 Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series that October, and the society's announcement says his career reached the Series. He was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1915 and died in Navasota in 1971.

The other story is smaller and harder to forget. Around 1910, a Montgomery teenager named John Bowe Addison was shot while hunting rabbits. A wound like that often killed people then. The town doctor worked through the night on him, and he lived. He lived to 84, in fact, and is buried in the New Montgomery Cemetery too. A young actor plays him.

Come at 11 for the bench

An hour before the tour, at 11 a.m., the society is holding a memorial and bench dedication at the New Montgomery Cemetery for Pat Spackey. Around the county she was the Texas Flag Lady. She was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Dr. Charles B. Stewart, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Montgomery doctor the town credits with drawing the Lone Star flag. Flag historians still argue over that credit. Montgomery does not, and calls itself the flag's birthplace. Stewart moved to Montgomery in 1837 and died in 1885. His memorial record places him in the same cemetery where the bench will stand.

Spackey gave years to the historical society, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Before you go

• Saturday, October 17. Bench dedication 11 a.m.; tour noon to 3 p.m.
• Free. Donations are optional and go to the society's buildings, school programs and scholarships for seniors at Montgomery's two high schools.
• These are working cemeteries with uneven ground. Shoes you can walk grass in are the practical choice.
• The society's museum, the N.H. Davis Complex, is at 14264 Liberty Street. Its number is 936-597-4360.

The society itself dates to 1954, when Anna Weisinger opened her restored house, called The Magnolia, to the town. It now keeps six historic buildings. The tour is one of the ways it pays for them.