Fairview Cemetery

Fairview holds Gainesville's ordinary and violent deaths side by side. A guide to the cemetery by historian Ron Melugin, as excerpted online, tells of a gunsmith, John Grimes, dead in 1889 after a barroom fight over a 25-cent repair bill, and of Homer Gibson, shot on the courthouse square in 1918 by his older brother, Brad, whom a jury acquitted. Another burial is Dr. Arthur Carroll Scott, born near Gainesville, who became chief surgeon of the Santa Fe Railroad and helped found Scott and White Hospital in Temple.

What the plaque says

Fairview Cemetery Originally the Howeth Family Cemetery, this site traces its history to 1854, when a tornado struck the Howeth family cabin near Gainesville. First buried here were Thomas and Louisa Howeth, young children of William and Harriet Bell Howeth. William Howeth deeded the ten-acre cemetery to Cooke county in 1868. In 1878 the Cooke County commissioners turned over the site to the city of Gainesville in a 999-year lease. A city ordinance reserved a section for freedmen. The cemetery's name was changed in 1897 to East Hill, and in 1904 the name was changed again to Fairview. A separate Jewish Cemetery adjoined this site from 1881 until 1964 when the two graveyards were combined. Among the estimated 18,000 graves are those of Civil War veterans; Preston Conlee, a San Jacinto Battle veteran and Bastrop County sheriff who lies in an unmarked grave; 34 victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic; Bob Scott, ex-slave and centenarian; and former U.S. Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey. A chapel and Sexton's office, designed by Dallas architect Will Scott Richter, was constructed in 1938 at a cost of $6,296. The arched gate dates to 1964. This Victorian-era cemetery continues to serve the city. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 0.9 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 23 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 23 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.

More markers nearby

• James Menees Lindsay — steps away
• J. D. "Ikard" Sugg — steps away
• Dougherty, F. M. — steps away
• G. H. Ragsdale — steps away