Fuller Park Cemetery - Athens, TX - Abandoned Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

Just slightly outside the city limits of Athens Texas lies an abandoned property known as Fuller Park. Today Fuller Park is nothing more than a few abandoned structures, trees, and a small abandoned cemetery containing the remains of the parks founder, the Rev. Melford Lee Fuller and his wife Virginia McClelland Fuller.

It is hard to find reliable information sources about the park (although there is no shortage of websites discussing the park, whether it is haunted, and about all sorts of other rumors and conspiracies related to this property and other locations in Athens).

Some sources state that Fuller Park was once the county poor farm. All sources seem to agree that the park was owned by Mr and Mrs Fuller, which is supported by statements in obituaries for both individuals. There is also various statements (unfounded and disputed) that the park was to become a zoo, and that Mr Fuller kept monkeys on the property. To this day there is an abandoned structure known as the monkey cage (or cages), which look like they were built to hold animals.

More or less in the center of the park is the cemetery. It holds only two graves, with two (now toppled) gravestones. The small cemetery is surrounded by a heavy fence constructed from stone and large iron chain. many small trees and shrubs now grow within the confines of the small cemetery. Both gravestones have been topped, and the stone fence is slowly failing in sections. It is unclean how much damage is the result of the forces of nature, and how much is at the hands of vandals.

Virginia McClelland Fuller was born in 1866 and died 21 Dec 1933. In her obituary, it states "At the close of the service friends of the deceased were given an opportunity to view the remains before taking the body to the Fuller ranch where her burial was held. It was on a twenty acre tract, beautified by nature, that Mrs. Fuller had requested that she be buried and her wishes were carried out. The twenty acres were set aside for a park by Rev. and Mrs. Fuller some time ago and he has announced that the entire ranch will eventually become the property of Buckner's Home and the First Baptist Church of Athens." (originally published in the Athens Review December 1933; source: (visit link)

Obviously that last part about the church being moved to Fuller Park never materialized - the church is located to this day in the same place where Mr Fuller was instrumental in seeing a new building constructed in the 1920's.

Rev. Melford Lee Fuller was born 18 Apr 1875 and died 7 Jan 1944. He was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Athens, Tx. for over 25 years. (visit link)


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Earliest Burial: 12/21/1933 Latest Burial: 01/07/1944

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