​Pearce-Maxwell Cemetery

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Marker No: 18639

Texas Historic Cemetery Marker

Geographic: 29.057663, -98.446220

Location: 13870 FM 536, Pleasanton

Marker Text: The 1850 US census shows members of the Pearce, Tollett, McMains, Neil, Briscoe, Dossey and Carver families living in Sevier County, Arkansas. Samuel Ellis Pearce, a Baptist minister, was perhaps the leader of the group of these families who settled in Wilson County, west of Floresville In the communities of Fairview and Loire. Governor Sam Houston signed Pearces 160 acre grant only one days before Texas seceded from the Union.
    Emily (Dossey) Tollett,  wife of Peter Wesley Tollett, died in 1858 at the age of eighteen, and appears to be the first burial in the cemetery 
established on Pearce's land. Rev. Pearce's wife, Cintha Rillah Hooper (Tollett)  Pearce, died the following year. In 1873, Pearce sold fifty acres to George Maxwell, and designated five acres for the cemetery, which by then had at least nine graves. The earliest burials are in a row in the center of the tract, surrounded by oak trees. Maxwell sold the surrounding property in 1899 and it has been sold several times since, but always with the designation of the five acre cemetery.
   The town of Fairview declined as families moved away. Burials here continued until about 1938, and at times the cemetery  had become  untended,  overgrown with vegetation, and damaged by livestock and wild animals. A 1965 survey  accounted for 65 marked and 11 unmarked graves, and approximately 80 graves have now been identified. As one of the oldest cemeteries in Wilson County, the Pearce-Maxville cemetery is a sacred place and a cherished record past generations. (2016)