Site of Chesser Valley Community
Mullin, Mills County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Near this site is the Chesser Valley, named for early settler John Dan Chesser, whose home became the focal point of a small rural community by the same name. Missouri native John Dan Chesser (1842-1914) moved to Texas with his family in 1854 and married Tennessean Elizabeth Caroline Epley (1842-1924) in 1860. They first lived in Burnet, Texas, but moved to this part of the state after Chesser's service in the Texas State Troops during the Civil War. The Chesser's homesteaded 160 acres of land in the valley in what was then part of Brown County. They expanded their log home as their family grew to number 11 children. It served as a church, hospital and hotel for travelers along the Williams Ranch Road. Chesser Valley was the site of frequent camp meetings. Entire families came from miles away to camp out in a grove of Live Oak trees and attend prayer and preaching services under a tabernacle near the Chesser house. A one-teacher school began in 1868 to serve the children in the area around Chesser Valley. After Mills County was created out of Brown County in 1887, the new county commissioners court recognized the school district and designated it as District No. 8. Those who settled the Chesser Valley community were primarily friends and family of John Dan and Elizabeth Chesser. The Chesser house, which had been the nucleus of the community, burned in 1926, and by the dawn of the 21st century, only one original structure remained from the period of the valley's settlement.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chesser Valley took its name from John Dan Chesser, a Missouri native who came to Texas in 1854 and, after serving in the Texas State Troops during the Civil War, homesteaded 160 acres here with his wife Elizabeth. Their expanding log home doubled as church, hospital, and travelers' hotel, and the valley became a gathering place for camp meetings where families came by wagon to worship under a brush tabernacle. A one-teacher school opened in 1868, but after the Chesser house burned in 1926 the little community all but vanished.
Why it matters
The Chesser homestead shows how a single frontier family's home could serve as the church, school, and social heart of a rural Texas community.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Dan Chesser
- · Elizabeth Caroline Epley Chesser
Related events
- · Creation of Mills County (1887)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Duren Cemetery
Mullin, TX
Philip David Duren bought 390 acres here in 1876 and raised a log home, bringing his family from Houston County. His infant daughter Willie Lee, buried in 1878, was the first laid to rest in what became the community cemetery. Duren deeded land for a school that ran until 1947 and, in 1912, guaranteed free burial plots and a church open to all denominations; Pompey Mountain Church still serves the area.
Mount Olive Primitive Baptist Church and Cemetery
Goldthwaite, TX
Organized in 1899 with nineteen charter members in the tiny community of North Bennett, this Primitive Baptist congregation bought fifteen acres for a meetinghouse and cemetery and, like many rural Texas churches, doubled its building as a schoolhouse shared among denominations. The community thinned during World War II and the congregation dwindled, but its cemetery still holds early settlers and military veterans and continues to serve the surrounding countryside.
Antioch Cemetery
Blanket, TX
Antioch Cemetery grew out of a late-19th-century farming community in Brown County, on land the Grazier family deeded to the county in 1880 for schooling and burials. A combined church-and-school building nearby made the site a hub of frontier community life before the district eventually folded into the Blanket schools. Its earliest marked graves date to 1881, and among those interred are Civil War veterans and other pioneers who built the settlement.
The Rev. Noah Turner Byars
Brownwood, TX
Noah T. Byars, a South Carolina–born blacksmith and gunsmith, set up shop at Washington-on-the-Brazos, where Texas delegates adopted their Declaration of Independence in 1836—after which he was named armorer of the Texas army. Ordained a Baptist preacher in 1841 and appointed the state convention's first missionary in 1848, he is credited with founding more than 60 churches across the Texas frontier. He helped organize Brownwood's First Baptist Church and championed the Baptist college that opened as Howard Payne in 1889, a year after his death.