Cornelia Tyler, the youngest of nine children of John and Laura (Fuqua) 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 in Dallas, she moved here and became the principal and only teacher at the city's colored school, also called Bethelda School, for African-American children, where she taught for nearly twenty years. She married John Graves, a Civil War veteran, and in 1926 the couple moved to Amarillo because he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In Amarillo, she 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.