Center Point Cemetery occupies a quiet patch of the Fairview community north of Saint Jo — not a town anymore, just a road name and a memory of the dispersed rural settlement that Montague County used to be. The cemetery itself carries three names: Center Point, Fairview, and in the oldest references, Bonita. The three names are not three cemeteries. Find A Grave resolves the question directly, listing this burial ground as “Center Point Cemetery (a.k.a. Fairview Cemetery)” — Cemetery #3520 — in Saint Jo, Montague County. Whether “Bonita” was an older name for the same ground, a nearby community designation, or a third distinct burial site that has been conflated with this one remains an open question; no primary record has resolved it.
What is documented: 581 memorial records on Find A Grave as of the 2026-05-07 research date, with 89 percent of those memorials photographed. That 89-percent photography rate — approximately 517 of 581 graves documented with images — reflects a sustained community documentation effort, the kind of volunteer work that quietly preserves burial records that would otherwise exist only in deteriorating stone.
Location and Access
Center Point Cemetery is located in the Fairview area near Saint Jo, in northern Montague County. The road designation is Fairview Road or a parallel rural access road; the precise farm road number has not been confirmed in available sources. GPS coordinates have not been obtained and require either a BillionGraves search, a Find A Grave location record, or a field survey.
The cemetery is one of three principal burial grounds serving the Saint Jo area. Mountain Park Cemetery (Find A Grave #5451) on FM 677 is the largest of the three, with 2,218 documented memorials. Starkey Cemetery on US 82 has 678 documented memorials. Center Point, with 581, is the smallest of the three and the most rural in character, situated in the Fairview community rather than within the Saint Jo municipal footprint.
Establishment and Settlement Context
No establishment date for Center Point Cemetery has been confirmed in available sources. The Montague County Historical Commission cemetery inventory does not record a founding year, and the THC Atlas search conducted in May 2026 did not locate an HTC designation record for this cemetery under any of its three names — Center Point, Centerpoint, or Fairview.
The cemetery’s founding almost certainly traces to the period of Saint Jo’s early development. Saint Jo was established in the 1850s, when brothers James and Amos Singletary and John Hughes platted the original townsite. The Fairview community, which gave this cemetery one of its names, developed as part of the broader Saint Jo settlement area in the same era. Family and community burial grounds in Montague County typically appeared within a decade of a community’s first settlement, placing the probable founding of Center Point Cemetery in the 1860s or 1870s — though no primary record confirms this. The earliest known burials have not been identified from available sources.
The multi-name problem reflects the fluid identity of rural Montague County communities. Place names attached to burial grounds often came from the nearest community, a road name, a founding family, or a local landmark — and as those communities shrank, merged, or disappeared, the cemetery names multiplied without consolidating. The documentation gap on “Bonita” is a specific instance of that pattern.
Documentation Status
Center Point Cemetery is one of the more sparsely documented cemeteries in the county’s deepdive set. The primary confirmed facts are:
- Name: Center Point Cemetery (canonical per Find A Grave); also Fairview Cemetery (confirmed alternate); Bonita (status unresolved)
- Find A Grave ID: #3520
- Memorial count: 581, with 89 percent photographed
- Location: Fairview area, near Saint Jo, Montague County
All other fields — establishment date, earliest burial, founding family, land acquisition, HTC status, management entity, maintenance status, GPS coordinates, and distinctive physical features — remain unconfirmed in available sources.
No Texas Historical Commission Historical Marker has been located for Center Point Cemetery. No cemetery association has been identified. No notable burials have been confirmed.
This documentation level is not exceptional for Montague County’s smaller rural cemeteries. The county inventory of 121 named cemeteries includes dozens with similarly sparse records. What distinguishes Center Point from the most obscure entries is the Find A Grave record: 581 memorials and 89-percent photography coverage represent a substantial community documentation effort, even if the cemetery’s institutional history has not been captured.
Genealogical Access
For researchers, the Find A Grave corpus at Cemetery #3520 is the primary access point. The 89-percent photography rate means that the large majority of graves have image records available for remote viewing. The remaining 11 percent — approximately 64 memorials without photographs — likely reflects weather-damaged or illegible stones, recent burials, or gaps in volunteer coverage.
Texas Death Certificates (1903 onward, indexed on FamilySearch) cover the bulk of the 20th-century burial record. Pre-1903 burials must be reconstructed from other sources: county probate records at the Montague County Clerk’s Office, church burial registers if a congregation was associated with this cemetery, family Bible records, and obituary notices in Saint Jo and Bowie newspapers (available through the Portal to Texas History for some date ranges).
The Montague County Historical Commission Cemetery Board maintains the county inventory. Direct contact with the MCHC may clarify the Bonita name question and current management status.
Three Saint Jo Cemeteries
Center Point sits within a cluster of three cemeteries that together represent Saint Jo’s burial landscape. The three are distinct grounds:
Mountain Park Cemetery (Find A Grave #5451) — located on FM 677, this is the largest of the three Saint Jo cemeteries and the one most associated with the municipality itself. 2,218 documented memorials, 92 percent photographed.
Starkey Cemetery (Find A Grave #678) — located on US 82, with 678 documented memorials and 91 percent photographed. The Starkey family name appears in early Saint Jo–area settlement records.
Center Point Cemetery (Find A Grave #3520) — located in the Fairview community, rural character, 581 memorials, 89 percent photographed. The smallest of the three and the farthest from the Saint Jo municipal center.
All three cemeteries lack confirmed establishment dates and HTC designations as of the research date.