Fairview Cemetery and School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Fairview Cemetery and School, out there in Van Zandt County. Now, some communities get started with a grand gesture, and some get started with a single acre. In 1875, a man named R.

H. Reeves donated one acre of land to the Fairview community, set aside for church and school purposes. One acre.

You think about how much history can grow out of one acre of Texas ground, and this story right here will show you. First thing they put on that land was a one-room log schoolhouse. And part of that same acre was set aside for a cemetery.

The oldest documented burial there is that of Susanna Carter, in 1876, just a year after Reeves made his donation. Most of the graves in that cemetery, by the way, were dug not by hired hands or professionals, but by family members and friends. There is something quietly powerful about that.

A community that buries its own, with its own hands. Now, the log schoolhouse, it burned down. The marker doesn't say when, and I won't pretend to know.

But after it did, the community came back and put up another wooden school building on the very same site. And then the student population grew, so they added another room, and that addition gave the building a kind of character, an L-shaped structure sitting there on donated ground. Pupils and their teachers walked to school, or they rode horses or mules.

No buses, no automobiles pulling up to the door. Just boots and hooves on a dirt road. Many of the teachers boarded with local residents, which means those families fed them, gave them a bed, and sent them back to the schoolroom in the morning.

That is a community investing in itself. Then came the early 1920s, and the community made another move. They tore down that two-room school, and here is the part I love: they didn't waste the lumber.

They used it, in part, to erect a larger three-room school right there on the same ground. Old boards becoming new walls. In 1924, J.

F. Liston donated additional land to the school for a teacherage and a playground. The place kept growing.

But the ground beneath all of this was cotton country. The economy of the area was dependent on cotton farming, and when cotton production declined through the 1930s and into the 1940s, families started moving away. The school closed in 1945.

That same year, 1945, the last burial occurred at the Fairview Cemetery. The school building, though, it didn't just sit there abandoned. The community used it as a community center for many years.

It outlasted the school, outlasted the cotton economy, outlasted a generation of those who had walked or ridden mules to sit inside it. And then, in 1995, it burned. One acre of land, donated in 1875.

A log school, a cemetery, a replacement school, an L-shaped building, a three-room building built from the bones of the one before it. Burials dug by neighbors. Teachers fed at family tables.

And in the end, fire took what fire hadn't taken the first time. The marker went up in 1996. The ground is still there.

One acre in Van Zandt County that carried all of that.

What the marker says

R. H. Reeves donated one acre of land in 1875 to the Fairview community for church and school purposes. A one-room log schoolhouse was erected on the site, and part of the land was set aside for a cemetery. The oldest documented burial in the cemetery is that of Susanna Carter in 1876. Most of the graves were dug by family members and friends. In 1945 the last burial occurred at the Fairview Cemetery. After the log school burned down, another wooden school building was constructed on the site. When the student population increased, another room was added, making the schoolhouse an L-shaped structure. Pupils and their teachers either walked to school or rode horses or mules. Many teachers boarded with local residents. In the early 1920s, the two-room school was torn down, and the lumber was used in part to erect a larger three-room school. J. F. Liston donated land to the school in 1924 for a teacherage and playground. The economy of the area was dependent on cotton farming. Cotton production declined in the 1930s-40s, and many families moved away. The school closed in 1945, but was used as a community center for many years until it was destroyed by fire in 1995. (1996)