Fairmount Cemetery
San Angelo, Tom Green County, Texas
Marker Inscription
San Angelo established the "New City Cemetery" here in 1893 on 22.5 acres. The first recorded burial was that of city alderman George Bond's wife, Elise, in 1893. A cemetery association, formed in 1897, organized a volunteer women's auxiliary to manage the graveyard. The auxiliary was headed by Mrs. C. A. Broome for 38 years. Early auxiliary member Leila Hill is credited with naming the cemetery "Fairmount". Although the association deeded the cemetery to the city in 1927, a perpetual care fund was created and the women's auxiliary continued to oversee operations. Fairmount Cemetery's 52 acres contain more than 33,000 burials, some of which were transferred from other area graveyards. Interred here are former slaves; African American Buffalo Soldiers; pioneer ranchers and oilmen; civic leaders; and veterans of wars ranging from the Texas Revolution to the Vietnam conflict including Lt. Jack Mathis, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for service in the European Theater in World War II. Members of a local Greek Orthodox Church are buried in a separate section. Among the cemetery's outstanding statuary is the statue of Tom McCloskey by noted sculptor Frank Teich and one of St. Francis shaped by Italian artisans. (1994)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
San Angelo laid out its "New City Cemetery" here in 1893, and within a few years a volunteer women's auxiliary — led for 38 years by Mrs. C.A. Broome — took charge of the graveyard and renamed it Fairmount. Its 52 acres now hold more than 33,000 burials that read like a cross-section of West Texas history: former slaves, African American Buffalo Soldiers, pioneer ranchers and oilmen, and veterans of every conflict from the Texas Revolution through Vietnam, among them WWII Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Jack Mathis. Fine statuary, a Greek Orthodox section, and decades of women's stewardship make it a civic landmark.
Why it matters
Fairmount gathers the full sweep of the region's people — enslaved and free, soldier and settler, native-born and immigrant — into a single ground, and honors the women whose volunteer labor preserved it.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When San Angelo laid out its new city cemetery in 1893, West Texas was still shaking off its frontier youth. The Concho River country had been ranch land and army post — Fort Concho anchored the town's early years — and by the 1890s San Angelo was settling into the confident, growing rhythm of the Gilded Age. Railroads had arrived, wool and cattle money was building brick storefronts, and a raw crossroads was becoming a real city with churches, schools, and civic institutions.
A cemetery is one of the quiet markers of that transition. A town that expects to last needs a proper burial ground, planned and cared for rather than improvised. Twenty-two and a half acres set aside in 1893 was a statement of permanence, a place the community intended to keep for generations.
The decades that followed carried San Angelo through the oil booms of the early twentieth century and the reforming energy of the Progressive era, when women's clubs and civic associations organized to improve the everyday life of American towns. The stewardship of this cemetery grew directly out of that spirit of organized volunteer care.
People & events
The first person laid to rest here, in 1893, was Elise Bond, the wife of city alderman George Bond — a fitting beginning for a ground that would become a record of the town's civic life. Four years later a cemetery association formed and organized a volunteer women's auxiliary to manage the grounds, and it is the women's story that gives this place its character.
Mrs. C.A. Broome led that auxiliary for thirty-eight years, an extraordinary span of unpaid, sustained responsibility. An early member, Leila Hill, is credited with giving the cemetery the name it still carries: Fairmount. When the association deeded the grounds to the city in 1927, the women did not simply hand off the work — a perpetual care fund was created and the auxiliary kept right on overseeing operations.
The people buried here read like a cross-section of the region itself: former slaves, African American Buffalo Soldiers, pioneer ranchers and oilmen, civic leaders, and veterans of conflicts stretching from the Texas Revolution to Vietnam. Among them is Lt. Jack Mathis, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in the European Theater in World War II. Among the artistry is a statue of Tom McCloskey by the noted sculptor Frank Teich, and a figure of St. Francis shaped by Italian artisans.
Its place in the American story
Fairmount is a small map of America gathered into one ground. The presence of former slaves and African American Buffalo Soldiers alongside pioneer ranchers and immigrant families tells, in miniature, the larger national story of who built the West — a story far more diverse than the popular myth usually admits. The Buffalo Soldiers, the Black regulars of the U.S. Army, served across the frontier, and their graves here quietly correct any tidier version of that history.
The honor roll of veterans — from the Texas Revolution through Vietnam — makes the cemetery a continuous record of American service across more than a century. A Medal of Honor recipient rests among neighbors who never left the county, and that mixture is exactly the point: the nation's history is carried by ordinary and extraordinary lives side by side.
And there is the American story of the women who kept it. All across the country in these decades, women's volunteer associations sustained the civic institutions that men's names were often carved onto. Nearly four decades of leadership by one woman, and the auxiliary's refusal to stop working even after the city took title, is a vivid local instance of that national, largely uncredited labor.
If you visit
Give yourself time to wander rather than aim for a single grave. Fairmount rewards slow walking, because its meaning is in the range of people gathered here — a Medal of Honor recipient not far from pioneer ranchers, Buffalo Soldiers, oilmen, and a separate section for members of a local Greek Orthodox congregation.
Look for the statuary. The figure of Tom McCloskey came from the hand of a noted sculptor, and the St. Francis was shaped by Italian artisans; against the wide West Texas sky, that kind of craftsmanship in stone is worth pausing over. Read the older headstones for the mix of origins and eras they record.
As you walk, remember whose hands kept these grounds — the women's auxiliary that named the place and cared for it across generations. On a Concho Valley road trip, Fairmount pairs naturally with San Angelo's other frontier and military sites, and it makes a reflective counterpoint: not a battlefield or a fort, but the quiet ground where the whole community finally came to rest together.
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
- · Jack Mathis
- · C.A. Broome
- · Leila Hill
- · Frank Teich
Themes & tags
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