Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Sylvester, TX

Sylvester is a small unincorporated community in east-central Fisher County, Texas, at the junction of Farm Roads 57 and 1085, about ten miles southeast of Roby and forty-three miles northwest of Abilene.

The Compere brothers of Abilene founded Sylvester in 1903, buying part of the AJ Ranch in anticipation of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway, and they named the town for W. W. Sylvester, the railroad's promotion manager.

The rails reached Sylvester in 1905 and prosperity followed — by 1909 the community had an estimated population of 600.

Sylvester incorporated in 1927, and the federal census counted 382 residents in 1930 and 405 in 1940.

Competition from nearby towns sent Sylvester into decline; it had given up its incorporation and reverted to unincorporated status by 1950, and fewer than 100 people remained by the 1980s.

The Handbook of Texas estimated only 79 people in Sylvester in 2000, and the community appeared as a census-designated place for the first time in the 2020 census, which counted just 52 residents.

Even in its shrunken state, Sylvester long kept a local grocery, the Sylvester Mercantile, as a hub of the community.

Sylvester sits in Fisher County, created in 1876 and named for Samuel Rhoads Fisher, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence; the county seat is Roby.