Old Bryan City Cemetery, also known as Bryan's Old Graveyard and Bryan's Public Cemetery, was the first public cemetery for the City of Bryan and was in use by 1861. It predates the incorporation of the City of Bryan and stands on land originally owned by William Joel Bryan, the town's namesake. It was eventually replaced by Bryan City Cemetery and Oakwood Cemetery closer to the townsite of Bryan. In some public documents it is called the Yellow Fever Cemetery, a name that may come from the many yellow fever deaths in Brazos County in 1867 and again in 1873. After years of deterioration, only one marked grave remains, that of James P. King (1835-1868), a Mason, a member of Belmont Masonic Lodge No. 131, and a Confederate veteran who served as First Corporal in the Spy Company of Gonzales County. Another identified burial is Union Civil War veteran John Skues. City ordinances authorized the cemetery as a burial ground for paupers, and the small number of surviving headstones suggests that many of those buried there were poor or transient people. The few burial records that survive show people of varied backgrounds, including immigrants from Italy, Ireland, England, and Germany, and people of different ages and ethnicities. In 1868, the City of Bryan began burying citizens in the new City Cemetery. Although little is known about the many burials there, the cemetery represents the heritage of the early settlers of Bryan and Brazos County.