San Jose Cemetery is one of the names used for a graveyard, now no longer in active use, located at the former site of a small Catholic "mission church" or chapel at Mendieta (also spelled as Mendiete, Mendiates, and later as Bess), in the extreme northeastern corner of Duval County, Texas. This community's name seems to originate from an early landowner of the area (Dionicio Mendieta), and the name Mindiette was used in 1879 for a short-lived post office. According to records at the Corpus Christi diocesan chancery, "the chapel in Mindieta was named Our Lady of Loretto from 1916 to 1949 and then Our Lady of the Light from 1955-1963. The directory shows no name for the chapel between 1950-1954, but it was likely Marian in nature. Priests have been visiting that area since at least 1898, however no directory prior to 1916 show a name for the mission." A post office was again established in 1917, renamed as Bess, Texas. Further details of this community can be found in the Handbook of Texas under the name of Bess. The county map series (by the Texas State Highway Dept.) has versions for Duval Co. published in 1940 and 1961, which show the community (named as Bess on the 1941 version), with a church (labeled as Bess Church on the 1961 version) on the west side of an unimproved north-south road, with an unnamed cemetery on its north side and also a post office. The name "San Jose Cemetery" then appears on the first of the modern USGS 7.5' quad maps of the area (entitled "Shaeffer Ranch", published in 1963) with the community labeled as Mendiates. The north-south road is now known as County Road 103, existing as a gravel-surfaced road in this segment. As late as about the year 2000, a pile of weathered and rotting lumber could be observed at the former chapel's location, just across the roadside fence on private property, and just south of a west-pointing private driveway, and a series of concrete crosses could be seen just north of the same driveway among a stand of short thorny brush.