Fairview Church and Cemetery
Mt. Vernon, Franklin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Kentucky native and cattleman Julian N. Kimberlin (1848-1932) donated five acres of land here in 1880 to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for Grange hall, church, school, and burial purposes. The first recorded burial was that of Wilson B. Westerman in 1881. Although a local Grange chapter evidently never was organized, a building was erected by 1885 that served as a school and sanctuary for the Fairview community. By the time the church building was destroyed by a storm in 1913 the Fairview Methodist Church was no longer active. the community erected a new building several miles south of the cemetery near the community of Oak Dale. The new structure, known as Oak Dale Church, housed Fairview School and served as a non-denominational church building. In 1928-29 Fairview citizens erected a new chapel adjacent to the cemetery. The building became the site for religious and funeral services and special events for a number of denominations in the area. The Perpetual Care Fairview Cemetery presently contains more than 300 burials. Among the people interred here are many of the pioneer settlers of the area and their descendants and Civil War veteran C. C. Choate. (1995) Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1880 Kentucky-born cattleman Julian N. Kimberlin gave five acres for a Methodist church, school, Grange hall, and burial ground, and the first recorded burial came the next year. A building erected by 1885 served as both school and sanctuary until a 1913 storm destroyed it, after which the community built anew nearby and, in 1928-29, a fresh chapel beside the cemetery. The Fairview Cemetery today holds more than 300 graves, including pioneer settlers and a Civil War veteran.
Why it matters
Multi-purpose frontier grounds like Fairview — church, school, and cemetery at once — show how rural communities pooled a single gift of land to meet all their spiritual, educational, and civic needs.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Julian N. Kimberlin
- · Wilson B. Westerman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Joshua Foster Johnson
Mt. Vernon, TX
Arriving from Tennessee in 1845, Joshua Foster Johnson settled near the future Mount Vernon and helped found the town—first called Keith—in 1848. In the Third Texas Legislature he sponsored the bill establishing the Mount Vernon Male and Female Academies, an early step toward public schooling, and he sat in both the 1861 Secession Convention and the 1875 Constitutional Convention. A Baptist pastor as well, he helped organize the Mount Vernon Baptist Church.
Pine Forest Church and Cemetery
Sulphur Springs, TX
Founded about 1855 in the Stout Creek neighborhood, this Methodist church rose on land deeded to trustees who were also building schools and roads in the young settlement. The adjoining cemetery holds its earliest known grave from 1856, and by the 1860s the same building served for both worship and school classes. Now holding more than 600 graves, the church and cemetery remain active more than a century and a half later.
Brushy Mound
Tira, TX
The Brushy Mound community grew up around a Methodist church built in 1891 and took its name from the dogwood brush that once covered the area. A school had already opened in 1885 with Miss Mollie Wood as its first teacher, and a new church went up in 1917. The school was consolidated into the East Delta Independent District in 1949, marking the community's gradual absorption into the larger county.
Antioch Cemetery and Old Antioch Church of Christ
Biardstown, TX
Founded in the first years of Texas statehood between 1846 and 1848, this was the first Church of Christ in Lamar County, organized by Elder Thomas Barrett with the pioneer family of Rebecca Stone Biard, who had come from Alabama to start the Biardstown community. William W. Biard donated his 20-foot log cabin—outfitted with split-log seats and a stick-and-dirt chimney—for the first sanctuary, and at his mother's death in 1848 he gave the land for the cemetery, where her grave was the first. Both the log church and its successor doubled as community schools, and though the congregation disbanded around 1920, burials continue to this day.