Cornelia Graves
Stephenville, Erath County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The youngest of nine children of John and Laura (Fuqua) Tyler, Cornelia Tyler was born in Dallas in 1875. She attended Dallas schools and then Prairie View Normal School and Hearne Academy to earn her teaching certificate. After teaching inDallas, she moved here and was the principal and only teacher at the city’s colored school (or Bethelda School) for African-American children. She taught here for nearly twenty years. She married John Graves, a civil war veteran, and the couple moved to Amarillo in 1926 due to John’s diagnosis of tuberculosis. In Amarillo, Cornelia continued her career as an educator. In 1951, Cornelia Graves Elementary School in Stephenville was named in her honor. She died in Dallas in 1960.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Dallas in 1875, Cornelia Tyler trained at Prairie View Normal School and Hearne Academy before becoming the principal and sole teacher of Stephenville's school for African American children, where she taught for nearly twenty years. She married Civil War veteran John Graves and continued teaching in Amarillo after the couple moved for his health. In 1951 a Stephenville elementary school was named Cornelia Graves in her honor.
Why it matters
Her career illustrates the Black women educators who, often as a school's only teacher, carried the burden and dignity of educating their communities across the segregated South.
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Related people
- · Cornelia Graves
- · John Graves
Themes & tags
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