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Greenleaf Fisk, a pioneer who later would be known as the “Father of Brownwood,” gave the city five acres in 1868 for a public burial ground. It is now the Main City Cemetery of Brownwood. The original main gate to the cemetery was given by the Coggin family, who also helped found Brownwood. The gate consisted of large sculptured columns supporting an iron archway. Several decades later, that entrance was closed and a new entrance gate was donated by the Brownwood Garden Club. In 1978, the Greenleaf Cemetery Association was incorporated under the Texas Non-Profit Corporation Act. Those buried here lie beneath native trees such as cedar, oak, pecan, crepe myrtle and cottonwood. The first known burial is that of Emma B. Adams who passed in 1873. Citizens and families of those buried here cared for the cemetery until 1916, when the city wrote its maintenance into the city charter. Among those buried here are Noah T. Byars, owner of the blacksmith shop where the Declaration of Texas Independence was signed; Weston Lafayette Williams, Sam Houston’s son-in-law; Dr. Mollie Armstrong, the first woman optometrist in Texas; Robert Howard, author and creator of Conan the Barbarian; Will E. Mayes, who served as Lt. Governor of Texas, and was founder and dean of the school of journalism at the University of Texas; and Greenleaf Fisk himself. Also buried here are veterans from every war, including Buffalo Soldiers. Today, the Greenleaf Cemetery numbers more than 22,000 graves, reflecting a continuum of the area’s history from pioneer times to the modern day. |
