Fairview Cemetery
Center, Shelby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established in 1901, Fairview Cemetery was added as the City of Center's second oldest cemetery to augment burial plots for the first cemetery, the First United Methodist Church Cemetery (est. 1866). Fairview Cemetery Association was formed in 1901 with the following members: B.F. Bridges, A.R. Chandler, W.B. Downer, O.L. McKnight, John C. Rogers, John Sanders, and J.F. Willis. Land was purchased by the association for the cemetery from Allen R. Chandler, who had procured several pieces of land from the headright survey of Jesse Amason by way of James C. Wilson and his wife, Margaret Ann Davis. The first burial was in 1902 for Kate Crisp Ricks, one of the early promoters of the new cemetery. Many early civic leaders who assisted in the growth of the new city of Center and their families are buried in Fairview Cemetery. Some of the names include: R.L. (Bob) Parker, who brought the county records from Shelbyville to Center to establish the county seat; several Drs. Hurst, the family for whom Hurstown, south of Shelbyville, was named; Judge Richard S. Bryarly and his wife, Panzie Annie Rennick Bryarly, the first female member of the Texas Press Association, who was instrumental in organizing the Center Women's Reading Club in 1896; Roy R. Loving, a photographer of many early portraits and renderings of the downtown Center square; Richard Gathright Maury and his mother, Mrs. Virginia Gathright Maury; Dr. Laried Stephen Oates, Sr., and Dr. Laried Stephen Oates, Jr.; and W.A. Bridges, son of B.F. Bridges. Many tall and striking monuments can be found in this cemetery as well as a beautiful white gazebo in the center of the main drive through the cemetery. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2016
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1901 to add burial space alongside the older Methodist churchyard, Fairview became Center's second-oldest cemetery, organized by a seven-member association that bought land tracing back to the Jesse Amason headright survey. Kate Crisp Ricks, an early promoter of the project, was the first buried here in 1902. Its monuments mark many of the civic leaders who built the young town—among them Panzie Annie Rennick Bryarly, the first female member of the Texas Press Association—beneath tall memorials and a white gazebo at the cemetery's heart.
Why it matters
Fairview Cemetery gathers the founders of a growing East Texas county seat, including trailblazing women, into a single record of the town's making.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Center, the seat of Shelby County in the piney woods of deep East Texas, was a young and growing town at the dawn of the twentieth century. The Progressive Era was a time of civic ambition across America — of clubs and associations, of towns organizing themselves and looking to their futures — and a growing county seat needed the practical institutions to match, including room to bury its dead.
By 1901 the town's first cemetery, the Methodist churchyard established back in 1866, was no longer enough. Founding a second burial ground was the kind of civic act typical of the age: a group of leading citizens forming an association, buying land, and organizing on behalf of the whole community.
This was also an era when women were stepping more visibly into public life — into clubs, into the press, into civic organizing — and Center's story, as its cemetery records it, includes women who did exactly that.
People & events
Fairview Cemetery was established in 1901, and the Fairview Cemetery Association formed the same year with seven members: B.F. Bridges, A.R. Chandler, W.B. Downer, O.L. McKnight, John C. Rogers, John Sanders, and J.F. Willis. The land they bought traced back through several hands to the headright survey of Jesse Amason. The first burial, in 1902, was Kate Crisp Ricks, herself one of the early promoters of the new cemetery — a fitting first, the project's advocate becoming its first rest.
Walk among the monuments and you meet the people who made the town. R.L. (Bob) Parker, who carried the county records from Shelbyville to Center to establish the county seat. Several Drs. Hurst, for whose family nearby Hurstown was named. Roy R. Loving, a photographer who captured many early portraits and views of the downtown square.
Among them lies Panzie Annie Rennick Bryarly, wife of Judge Richard S. Bryarly and the first female member of the Texas Press Association, who helped organize the Center Women's Reading Club in 1896. Her grave, alongside those of the Maury family and two generations of Drs. Oates, makes this ground a roll call of the people who built a county seat.
Its place in the American story
Fairview gathers, in one place, the founders of an American town — the record-carrier who secured the county seat, the doctors, the photographer, the association members who organized it all. Across the country, cemeteries like this are among the most complete archives a young town ever kept of the generation that made it.
The presence of Panzie Annie Rennick Bryarly connects this quiet East Texas ground to the wider national story of women stepping into public life. As the first female member of the Texas Press Association and a founder of a women's reading club, she embodies the era's women's-club movement and the slow opening of the press and civic organizing to women — a chapter of American history that unfolded town by town.
And the cemetery's very founding — a citizens' association buying land, organizing, and planning for the town's future — captures the grassroots civic energy that shaped countless communities as America urbanized and its county seats came into their own.
If you visit
Look first for the white gazebo standing at the center of the main drive — it gives the grounds their calm, parklike heart and makes an easy landmark to orient by. From there, let the tall, striking monuments draw you in; the cemetery was clearly meant to honor, not merely to hold, the people beneath it.
Seek out the names the marker preserves. Find Kate Crisp Ricks, the first buried here in 1902, and Panzie Annie Rennick Bryarly, whose life reached beyond this town into the state's press and its women's clubs. Reading these stones in sequence is like reading the founding roster of Center itself.
If you are traveling through the piney woods of East Texas, Fairview makes a quietly rewarding stop for anyone who likes to meet a town by meeting its founders. Take your time along the main drive, and let the monuments and the gazebo set the unhurried pace the place invites.
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
- · Kate Crisp Ricks
- · Panzie Annie Rennick Bryarly
Themes & tags
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