At first, just the corner was visible in a field of old flood debris along an intermittent creek near The Plant at Kyle, on west FM 150. Martha Kinscherff and her husband Jamie, stewards and neighbors of the popular wedding venue, walked the area often, but it hadn’t caught their eye until one day just over a year ago.

“We lifted it up to see what it was and discovered it was a gravestone,” she recalled. What she still didn’t know was the story that would unfold about the ...