DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Fairy Cemetery, out there in Hamilton County. Now, before a place gets a name that sticks, it usually goes through a few that don't. This little community between two hills started out plain enough — folks just called it Gap.
Descriptive, practical, no fuss. That's the Texas way. But in the 1860s, the name shifted to Martin's Gap, and the story behind that shift is a sobering one.
A man named Jim Martin was reportedly killed by Indians while traveling through the area, and the community carried that name forward the way communities do — as a kind of remembrance, even an uneasy one. Martin's Gap held on through the years, sparsely settled, quietly growing. Then came 1884, and with it an application for a United States Post Office.
And here's where the story takes a turn nobody would've predicted. When local citizens went to choose a name for the new post office, they didn't reach for geography or history. They reached for a person.
Specifically, they reached for Fairy Fort Phelps — born in 1865, described on the marker as the petite daughter of pioneer settlers Battle and Sallie Fort. That's right. The town of Fairy, Texas got its name from a woman named Fairy.
And from everything the marker tells us, she earned it. Fairy and her father taught area children in a school they ran right there in their own home, for many years. The Fort family also donated land to several area churches.
These were people who gave what they had to the community growing up around them. Fairy Fort Phelps lived until 1938, long enough to see the town that bore her name put down roots. Now, out on the edge of that community sits the cemetery — and the cemetery, friends, has a story of its own.
The earliest known burial happened here around 1880. But here's a curious detail: deed records show this graveyard wasn't officially set aside as a community burial ground until 1890. The ground was already doing its work before the paperwork caught up.
And what ground it became. Encompassing three sections, the Fairy Cemetery holds numerous pioneer settlers within it. It holds dozens of victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic — dozens — which gives you some measure of how hard that wave hit even a small, sparsely settled community.
There's at least one Texas Ranger resting here. And there are veterans — of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. The full sweep of American conflict, right there between those two Hamilton County hills.
The cemetery contains many distinctive handmade gravestones and other types of grave markers. You can see the hands that made them. It's maintained to this day by a local association of descendants, which means the people buried there still have people looking after them.
Gap became Martin's Gap. Martin's Gap became Fairy. And Fairy became this — a cemetery that is, as the marker puts it, a reflection of the area's pioneer heritage.
From a name on a post office application to dozens of graves bearing the weight of a century's worth of living and dying, this little corner of Hamilton County has been holding onto its stories for a long, long time.
What the marker says
First called Gap for its geographic setting between two hills, this sparsely settled community became known as Martin's Gap in the 1860s after a man named Jim Martin reportedly was killed by Indians while traveling through the area. When local citizens applied for a United States Post Office in 1884, the name Fairy was chosen in honor of Fairy Fort Phelps (1865-1938), the petite daughter of pioneer settlers Battle and Sallie Fort. Fairy and her father taught area children in a school in their home for many years, and the Fort family donated land to several area churches. Although the earliest known burial occurred here about 1880, deed records show that this graveyard was not officially set aside as a community burial ground until 1890. Among those interred here are numerous pioneer settlers, dozens of victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic, at least one Texas Ranger, and veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. Encompassing three sections, the cemetery contains many distinctive handmade gravestones and other types of grave markers. Maintained by a local association of descendants, the cemetery is a reflection of the area's pioneer heritage. Recorded--1970