Chapin School
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Chapin School was begun for Marys Creek Community in the late 1870s in a log cabin on land deeded by Ivory H. Chapin (2 mi. SE). In 1884 the school was moved one mile west to a 2-room frame house on Mary's Creek on land donated by J. Fielding Dunlap (.5 Mi. S). It was moved again in 1936, to a rock structure on Chapin Road. In 1961, the Fort Worth Independent School District annexed the Chapin Common School District. Chapin School continued to be used for an elementary school, however, until 1968, when it closed.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Chapin School served the rural Mary's Creek community west of Fort Worth from a humble log cabin begun in the late 1870s on land donated by pioneer Ivory H. Chapin. Over the decades it grew and relocated more than once — from log cabin to frame house to a rock building — before the Fort Worth school district absorbed its common school district in 1961. It kept teaching local children until it finally closed in 1968.
Why it matters
The century-long life of a single country school captures how rural Texas educated its children through donated land and community effort until consolidation with growing city districts made the small schoolhouse obsolete.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ivory H. Chapin
- · J. Fielding Dunlap
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of White Settlement
White Settlement, TX
Six charter members founded this congregation in 1868 as New Prospect Baptist Church, gathering in a one-room log cabin that doubled as Grant's School and a community hall. A permanent sanctuary followed in 1905, and after a 1946 lightning fire the congregation rebuilt again by 1953. The wartime arrival of Consolidated Aircraft and Carswell Air Force Base swelled the surrounding population and, with it, the church's reach.
Castleberry School District
River Oaks, TX
Certified as a Texas common school district in 1898, this rural school began in a small frame building on donated land and passed through several names before being renamed for Zack and Fanny Castleberry, who supplied it with well water. Through parent-teacher partnership, WPA projects, and federal aid, it steadily expanded — swelling further during World War II as families arrived at nearby Carswell Air Force Base. When Fort Worth moved to charge tuition in 1956, Castleberry became an independent district and by the late 1990s served nearly 3,000 students across seven schools.
Alice E. Carlson Elementary School
Fort Worth, TX
Built in 1927 to a design by Fort Worth architect Wiley G. Clarkson, this Spanish Colonial Revival school — with its tile roof and wrought-iron lamps — grew with its neighborhood, expanding in 1935 with Works Progress Administration funds and again in 1953. It was named for Alice E. Carlson, a teacher who became the first woman to serve on the Fort Worth School Board. For generations the school anchored the community and shaped its children.
First Hundred Years of Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX
Texas Christian University grew from the 19th-century Christian Restoration Movement and the teaching family of Joseph Addison Clark and his sons Addison and Randolph. Home from the Civil War, the sons opened a school in Fort Worth in 1869 and founded Add-Ran Male and Female College at Thorp Springs in 1873. After moves to Waco and a devastating 1910 fire, the school returned to Fort Worth, which offered land and funds, and grew into a major university.