Cornelia Graves

The youngest of nine children of John and Laura (Fuqua) Tyler, Cornelia Tyler was born in Dallas in 1875. She attended Dallas schools and then Prairie View Normal School and Hearne Academy to earn her teaching certificate. After teaching inDallas, she moved here and was the principal and only teacher at the city’s colored school (or Bethelda School) for African-American children. She taught here for nearly twenty years. She married John Graves, a civil war veteran, and the couple moved to Amarillo in 1926 due to John’s diagnosis of tuberculosis. In Amarillo, Cornelia continued her career as an educator. In 1951, Cornelia Graves Elementary School in Stephenville was named in her honor. She died in Dallas in 1960.