McCraw's Chapel
Honey Grove, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Methodist Church and Cemetery Settlers farming the blackland prairie in this area gathered in the home of Ezekiel Phillips Warren (1828-1903) in 1859 to organize a Methodist congregation. Warren, a native of Tennessee who moved here in 1856, hosted the group for several years. In 1877 two acres of land for a church and cemetery were donated by William Bain McCraw (1841-1878) and others. The Rev. N. A. Keen was then minister for the Dodd City Circuit, which included the church here. McCraw, a native of Kentucky who served in the Confederate Army, was the first to be buried in the cemetery. An additional four acres adjacent to the church grounds were purchased in 1887. In the late 19th century, 10-day-long camp meetings were held on the church grounds in August. John M. Raiden taught school in the church building during the same years. A tornado destroyed the structure in 1918, and meetings were held in the nearby schoolhouse. A new building was erected in 1919, serving as an anchor for the congregation and the community. Membership fell from 170 in 1933 to 38 in 1963, and the church was disbanded in 1966. The building was razed in 1983, but the grounds continue to host an annual community homecoming on the first Sunday in May. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlers farming the blackland prairie gathered in Ezekiel Phillips Warren's home in 1859 to organize a Methodist congregation, and in 1877 William Bain McCraw and others donated land for a church and cemetery. The grounds hosted ten-day summer camp meetings and even a school taught in the church building, becoming an anchor for the community. Though the congregation disbanded in 1966 and the building was razed in 1983, an annual homecoming still draws people back each May.
Why it matters
McCraw's Chapel shows how a single rural church could serve as worship house, schoolroom, and social center for a farming community — and how such places live on in memory even after the buildings are gone.
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Related people
- · Ezekiel Phillips Warren
- · William Bain McCraw
- · Rev. N.A. Keen
- · John M. Raiden
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Shiloh Cemetery
Honey Grove, TX
In the 1840s and 1850s, families like the Selfs, Wrights, and Whittenbergs pushed into the blackland prairie of Fannin County, carving out farming communities in what was then the raw edge of the young Texas frontier. As neighbors clustered around church and school, they set aside ground for a shared burying place—land tradition says John M. Gross deeded before 1871—anchored by a Methodist congregation in 1878 and the Shiloh School that ran from 1880 to 1940. Tended by an association since 1952 and still the site of homecomings, the cemetery holds generations of the families who built the area.
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