Fairview Cemetery
Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The City of Bastrop was first laid out between 1830 and 1832. Included in the initial community plat was a twelve-acre cemetery overlooking the colony. Tradition holds that the first known grave was that of Sarah Wells (d. 1831), a child of early colonist "Marty" Wells. The first marked grave is that of Crescentia Augusta Fischer (d. 1841), a German immigrant who contracted yellow fever after landing in Galveston, Texas, and died five days after her arrival in Bastrop. The burial ground is significant as an early Republic of Texas cemetery located in one of the state's early communities. It is also the final resting place of numerous notable Bastrop citizens, including elected state and national officials, and veterans of major military conflicts dating to the War of 1812. Although headstones feature prominent names like Governor Joseph D. Sayers, U.S. Congressman George Washington "Wash" Jones and early African American legislator Robert Kerr, the cemetery is also a link to the many generations of ordinary Bastrop residents, all of whom contributed to Bastrop's rich history in their own way. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Laid out with the town of Bastrop between 1830 and 1832, this twelve-acre burial ground overlooking the colony is one of the oldest cemeteries of the Republic of Texas era. Among its graves is Crescentia Augusta Fischer, a German immigrant who caught yellow fever after landing at Galveston and died just five days after reaching Bastrop in 1841. Governors, congressmen, an early African American legislator, and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the War of 1812 all rest here alongside generations of ordinary townspeople.
Why it matters
Bastrop was one of the first communities of Stephen F. Austin's colony, and its founding-era cemetery is a physical roster of the settlers, immigrants, and public figures who built early Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When surveyors first laid out the town of Bastrop in the early 1830s, Texas was still part of Mexico. Anglo-American colonists had been arriving under the empresario system, and Stephen F. Austin's settlements were spreading up the river valleys. Bastrop grew up on the Colorado River, at the edge of the pine woods that still give this part of Central Texas its look. It was a frontier outpost in every sense.
The town's founders set aside a twelve-acre burial ground in that first plan, on high ground overlooking the young colony. That says something about the people who drew it. On a frontier where death came early and often, from fever, childbirth, accident, and conflict, a cemetery was not an afterthought. It was one of the first things a community needed.
Within a few years everything changed. The Texas Revolution of 1835–36 created the independent Republic of Texas, and Bastrop went from a Mexican colonial town to a community in a new nation. By the early 1840s immigrants were arriving from the United States and Europe through Gulf ports like Galveston, carrying hopes and, sometimes, disease.
The cemetery that started in those years kept growing through statehood, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and well into the modern era. Each layer of Texas history left its own graves on this hillside.
People & events
Local tradition holds that the cemetery's first burial was a child: Sarah Wells, daughter of early colonist "Marty" Wells, who died in 1831. Her grave carries no surviving stone, and her story comes to us through memory rather than a carved record. It's a fitting beginning all the same. Frontier cemeteries were filled first, and most painfully, by the very young.
The first grave that does carry a marker belongs to Crescentia Augusta Fischer, a German immigrant who died in 1841. Her journey sums up the risks of coming to Texas. She landed at Galveston, caught yellow fever there, and travelled inland, only to die five days after reaching Bastrop. Yellow fever haunted Gulf Coast ports in the nineteenth century, and many newcomers never got far beyond the docks.
Later generations brought names that reached the statehouse and the halls of Congress. Joseph D. Sayers went on to serve as governor of Texas. George Washington "Wash" Jones represented Texas in the U.S. Congress. Robert Kerr was an early African American legislator, one of the Black Texans who served in public office in the years after emancipation, when that was both rare and courageous.
The cemetery also holds veterans of America's wars going back to the War of 1812. But the marker insists that the heart of the place is ordinary people: the farmers, merchants, mothers, and children of generations of Bastrop. Their names may never appear in a history book, but together they made this town.
Its place in the American story
Fairview Cemetery is a small-scale record of how Texas was settled. Its earliest graves date to the colonial era, when Americans were moving onto Mexican land. Its burials from the 1840s belong to the Republic of Texas, a short-lived independent nation that joined the United States in 1845. Few places let you stand so close to that whole sequence.
The graves also show how many different people built Texas. A German immigrant's stone stands in the same ground as the graves of Anglo colonists, a governor, a congressman, and an African American legislator. That mix is the real story of the American frontier. It was never settled by one kind of person.
Robert Kerr's presence matters in particular. After the Civil War, Black Texans briefly won a voice in government before segregation and disfranchisement shut most of them out for generations. A grave like his is a reminder that this chapter happened, even though it was later pushed out of popular memory.
In 2003 the cemetery was designated a Historic Texas Cemetery, part of a broader national effort to protect burial grounds as historical documents. Their stones often hold dates and names that survive nowhere else.
If you visit
Come to Fairview Cemetery with time to wander. Old cemeteries reward slow walking: the oldest stones, worn soft by weather, sit near grander monuments from later decades. Look at the changing styles of grave markers, from plain early slabs to Victorian carving. They trace the town's growing prosperity.
See if you can find the stone of Crescentia Augusta Fischer, the first marked grave. Spend a moment with her story: an ocean crossing, a fever caught on the coast, and a life that ended days after she reached her new home. Then look for the better-known names, and remember that most of the people resting here are the unnamed builders of an ordinary town.
Please treat the grounds with respect. This is still a cemetery, not a park. Stay on paths where you can, don't lean on fragile stones, and leave everything as you found it.
Bastrop makes an easy and rewarding stop on a Central Texas road trip. Its historic downtown, its river setting, and the surrounding Lost Pines make it a fine half-day detour. Start with the cemetery to meet the town's founders, then walk the streets they laid out.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Crescentia Augusta Fischer
- · Joseph D. Sayers
- · George Washington "Wash" Jones
- · Robert Kerr
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Baron de Bastrop Monument
Bastrop, TX
This monument honors Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop (1770–1829), a colonizer whose intervention proved decisive for Anglo-American Texas. As a land commissioner and Red River empresario, he helped Moses Austin win the first Spanish contract to colonize Texas in 1821 and later served in the Congress of Coahuila and Texas. In 1837 the town and county — once called Mina — were renamed Bastrop in his memory.
Claiborne Cemetery
Bastrop, TX
After Moses Gage bought land along Alum Creek in 1837, a small settlement known as Craft's Prairie grew up around his family in Bastrop County. When his son Sherly Gage died in 1850 he was buried on a rise above Little Alum Creek, and the Black, Rector, and Gage families—along with roughly thirty enslaved people in the site's southeast corner—filled the graveyard through the 1860s. Martha Jane Claiborne formally established the cemetery before her death in 1936, and a family association has cared for it since 1947.
Rockne
Rockne, TX
Rockne grew from farms broken by German immigrants who reached this Bastrop County creek country beginning in the 1840s, families like the Lehmans and Meuths arriving from Prussia and central Germany. A Catholic parish anchored the community, which cycled through names—Walnut Creek, Lehman, Hilbigville—as stores and post offices came and went. In 1931 schoolchildren renamed it for Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne, killed that year in a plane crash.
Webberville
Webberville, TX
This Colorado River community grew from a land grant received in 1827 by John F. Webber, who settled here with his African American wife and children at a time when such a family faced deep hostility in the region. A post office opened for 'Webber's Prairie' in 1846, and by 1853 the town had taken the name Webberville. Built on cotton farming, it grew to include grist and cotton mills, stores, schools, churches, and a ferry crossing that operated into the 1920s.