Alice Cemetery
Alice, Jim Wells County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground has served Alice-area residents for more than 100 years, and the story of its genesis and ongoing use involves many individuals in the community’s history. By the late 1880s, Frederic B. Nayer lived in this area, then part of Nueces County. The Collins community had about 2,000 residents by 1891, but the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad Co. built through the area three miles west of the town to intersect the Texas Mexican Railway. Nayer helped sell lots at the rail intersection for the new townsite that would become Alice, and in 1903, he donated the land for the city burial ground, initially called Alice Fraternal Cemetery. In 1925, the Alice Cemetery Association formed and the name of the burial ground changed. Martha Fawcus served as the association’s first president. Under her leadership in 1952, members planted 100 oak trees that more than 50 years later remained a defining feature of the site. Individuals buried at the cemetery include prominent citizens of Alice’s past, military veterans, Texas Rangers and generations of community residents. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When two railroads crossed three miles from the old Collins community in the 1890s, a new town called Alice sprang up at the junction, and Frederic B. Nayer—who had helped sell its lots—donated ground for a burial place in 1903. First called the Alice Fraternal Cemetery, it was renamed after a cemetery association formed in 1925 under its first president, Martha Fawcus, who led the planting of a hundred oaks that still shade the grounds. Prominent citizens, veterans, and Texas Rangers rest among generations of South Texas families.
Why it matters
The cemetery marks how the railroad remade South Texas, drawing an entire community to a new junction town and leaving its dead as the enduring record of that migration.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the single most powerful force reshaping South Texas was the railroad. Where the tracks went, towns lived; where they missed, towns died. Whole communities could rise or wither on the decision of a rail company about where to lay its line — and that is precisely the drama behind the founding of Alice.
When this story begins, in the late 1880s, the area was still part of Nueces County, a country of ranchland and small settlements. The nearby community of Collins had grown to some two thousand residents by 1891. But the railroad had its own logic. The San Antonio & Aransas Pass line was built through the area a few miles to the west, to meet the Texas Mexican Railway — and that junction, not the established town, became the place with a future.
This spans the Reconstruction and Gilded Age into the Progressive era, decades when transportation networks were remaking the map of America. In South Texas, the arrival of the rails pulled people, commerce, and eventually the dead of an entire community toward the new crossing, leaving the old settlement behind.
People & events
Frederic B. Nayer was living in this area by the late 1880s, and he became one of the hands that shaped the new town. When the rail junction created the opportunity for a townsite — the place that would become Alice — Nayer helped sell the lots that turned open ground into a community. He was, in effect, present at the town's creation.
His most lasting gift came in 1903, when he donated the land for the city's burial ground, first known as the Alice Fraternal Cemetery. Every town needs a place to lay its people to rest, and Nayer's donation gave the young community that essential, permanent institution. The cemetery has served the Alice area for well over a century since.
A second chapter opened in 1925, when the Alice Cemetery Association formed and the burial ground took a new name. Its first president was Martha Fawcus, and under her leadership the cemetery gained one of its most enduring features. In 1952, the association planted a hundred oak trees — a decision that, more than fifty years later, still defined the character of the grounds. Beneath and among those oaks lie prominent citizens of Alice's past, military veterans, Texas Rangers, and generation upon generation of ordinary community residents.
Its place in the American story
The birth of Alice is a near-perfect illustration of how the railroad rewrote American geography. All across the country in these years, the same thing happened: a rail junction summoned a town into being while an older, larger settlement nearby faded because the tracks passed it by. The story of a community of two thousand being eclipsed by a crossing three miles away is the story of the rail age in miniature.
There's a deeper American truth in the cemetery itself. A burial ground is often the most complete and honest record a community keeps of itself — its names, its families, its wars, its span of years. When people followed the railroad to a new junction town, they eventually brought their dead there too, and the cemetery became the enduring proof that a real community, not just a rail stop, had taken hold.
The roll of those buried here — veterans, Texas Rangers, leading citizens, and countless everyday families — also reflects the layered history of South Texas: a frontier region, a place shaped by law and conflict, and finally a settled community with generations deep enough to fill a cemetery's oak-shaded rows.
If you visit
Come to Alice Cemetery as you would to any place that has quietly gathered a town's memory for more than a century — with unhurried attention. The most striking feature is exactly what Martha Fawcus and her association intended: the oaks. Planted in 1952, they've had generations to grow, and the canopy they form is the defining atmosphere of the grounds. Walking beneath them, you're standing inside a deliberate act of care by people who wanted this place to be beautiful for those who came after.
Read the stones as a history of South Texas. The cemetery holds prominent early citizens, military veterans, and even Texas Rangers alongside ordinary families — a cross-section of the community that the railroad drew together. Each marker is a small piece of the story of how a junction town became a real place with a long memory.
For a traveler tracing the rail heritage of South Texas, Alice makes a meaningful stop, and this burial ground is where the town's beginnings feel most tangible. Remember as you visit that the very ground was a gift — donated in 1903 so the community would always have a place of its own — and let that generosity set the tone for a respectful, reflective pause on your route.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Frederic B. Nayer
- · Martha Fawcus
Themes & tags
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