Harrison Chapel
Dew, Freestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized in 1850s, with twelve members. Site for the Methodist church was given by a pioneer, George Harrison. With influx of settlers, church grew firm in faith, and worked with people from a large surrounding area, through annual camp meetings. The Rev. Horace Bishop, the Rev. A. M. Eubank and the Rev. A. C. Littlepage were noted pastors. Site for cemetery was given by Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Harrison. Many early settlers, including numerous Confederate veterans, are buried here. Heirs gather for annual commemorations. The church moved to Dew in 1870.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in the 1850s with a mere dozen members on land donated by pioneer George Harrison, this Methodist congregation grew as settlers poured into the surrounding country. Its annual camp meetings drew worshippers from a wide area, a hallmark of frontier Protestant revivalism. The adjoining cemetery holds many of the region's earliest settlers, including numerous Confederate veterans, and the church itself relocated to Dew in 1870.
Why it matters
The camp-meeting church and its pioneer cemetery capture how faith and community took root together on the antebellum Texas frontier.
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Related people
- · George Harrison
- · Horace Bishop
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dew Cemetery
Dew, TX
Families from Alabama settled this Freestone County prairie in the 1850s, calling it Avant and then Sunshine before a postal clerk's misreading of "Drew" fixed the name as Dew in 1885. Land donated in 1869 by settlers W. S. Compton and D. A. Self created this community cemetery, whose earliest graves include victims of the 1873 yellow fever epidemic and, decades later, the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. A cotton-market town of gins and stores, Dew now gathers each Memorial Day to tend the eleven-acre burial ground of some 1,000 graves.
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