Newman Cemetery

Sylvester, Fisher Co. Cemeteries of TX

Location: From Sylvester take FM 1085 7.8 miles south; turn west on CR 251 continue about .5 mile to cemetery and marker.

History: Jim Newman, one of Fisher County's earliest settlers, established a ranch in this area about 1879. The community that developed near his ranch was named Newman when the county's first post office opened here in 1881. The town consisted of the Old Newman and Union Hall Schools, a post office/grocery store, and the Newman Baptist Church by 1901. The Newman Cemetery was legally set aside in a deed conveying property at this site for cemetery purposes in 1906. The first persons buried here were Miller Phigpen and J. E. W. Scott in 1906. Among the sixteen veterans of various wars buried here is American Civil War veteran R. L. Creswell. The Methodist Episcopal Church built a sanctuary here about 1908. Union Hall and Old Newman schools consolidated in 1913, and in 1924 a new brick schoolhouse was constructed. In 1929 the Methodist Episcopal and Baptist churches erected new sanctuaries. A steady decline in the area's population resulted in the dissolution of the Methodist Church in 1940, the school in the early 1940s and the Baptist Church about 1950. Vestiges of the town's church and school structures and the still active Newman Cemetery are all that remain of the former town of Newman. (1993)