The Grave of Rope Walker

Rope Walker was a peg-legged Jewish tightrope walker who died in 1884, when he fell from a rope stretched across one of the town’s main streets. He had an iron stove strapped to his back.

According to local stories, he asked for a rabbi as he was dying, but he did not reveal his name. And so he was buried as “Rope Walker” in the Hebrew Cemetery of Corsicana, a small town 55 miles south of Dallas.

Rope Walker is something of a Corsicana legend. His original arch-topped tombstone has been set flat into cement, and a new marker has been added with his death date. Babbette Samuels, the 85-year-old secretary treasurer of the cemetery board, is responsible for the replacement headstone and preservation work.In 2016, a possible identity of the Rope Walker was revealed as “Professor Moses Berg,” also known as “Professor Daniel De Houne.”