Fairmount Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Way out in Sabine County, along the quiet banks of South Prong Creek, families were putting down roots as early as the eighteen fifties. They built their lives out there, raised children, kept a post office running from eighteen fifty-four all the way until nineteen thirty-seven, with just a brief interruption somewhere along the way.

They kept a school going too, right up until nineteen fifty-three. That's a community with staying power, friends. That's people who meant to be somewhere.

Now, when you settle land, you don't just plan for the living. You plan for those who won't be around to see what comes next. And so, by the mid-eighteen fifties, it's believed the residents of Fairmount had already begun making burials at the community cemetery.

Nobody knows for certain who rests there first, because the earliest graves carried no markings that survived the years. But then comes eighteen seventy-four, and history finally gets a name to hold onto. The first marked grave belongs to Eli Elijah Smith, a son of Mary Jane and Edward Smith.

Edward Smith was a Baptist pastor, a man who served area churches, including Friendship Missionary Baptist, which stood near that very cemetery. Think about that for a moment. The man who may have spoken words of comfort over the graves of his neighbors, one day had a grave of his own family's cut into that same ground.

Fairmount Cemetery stands today as a link, a tangible, dirt-and-stone link, to the pioneer settlers and the generations of families who called South Prong Creek home. The names may weather off the stones, but the ground remembers.

What the marker says

As early as the 1850s, families settled here along South Prong Creek. Except for a brief period, a post office operated from 1854 until 1937. The community also supported a school until 1953. It is believed residents made burials at this community cemetery by the mid-1850s, but the first marked grave, that of Eli Elijah Smith, dates to 1874. He was a son of Mary Jane and Edward Smith, a Baptist pastor who served area churches including Friendship Missionary Baptist, located near the cemetery. Today, the burial ground is a link to pioneer settlers and generations of area residents. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004