LaGrone's Chapel

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it straight along to you. Way out in Harrison County, there's a little chapel with a name carved right into the history of this land, and that name is LaGrone's. Jacob LaGrone, born in 1785, was the kind of man they called a pioneer and meant it.

He settled here in 1837, back when Texas was its own republic, its own nation entire, and this patch of ground was his. He'd live to see 1868, and in between, he put roots down deep. Now Jacob LaGrone himself never saw that chapel go up.

It was built about 1866, after the war, after the world had turned itself inside out and back again. And here's where the story gets good, because nobody just ordered it out of a catalog. The timber was sawed at Harleton's Mill, twelve miles north, then brought back and hand-dressed right there at the construction site.

Think about what that means. Every beam shaped by hand, on the spot, in the weather, with the tools at hand. A man named T.

B. McFarland supervised the work, and the neighbors, the actual neighbors, donated their labor. Not their money.

Their hands. Their time. Their sweat in the Texas heat.

That's a community deciding something matters enough to build it together. Then comes the paperwork, as it always does. David McKinney had purchased two hundred acres from LaGrone's estate, and on August 17, 1870, he deeded that property to the Methodist denomination.

A pioneer's land, shaped into a chapel by a community's hands, passed on to something meant to outlast them all. And friend, it did.

What the marker says

Situated on land owned by a pioneer, Jacob LaGrone (1785-1868), who settled here in 1837, as a citizen of Republic of Texas. Chapel was built about 1866, of timber sawed by Harleton's Mill (12 mi. N) and hand-dressed at construction site. T. B. McFarland supervised the work; neighbors donated their labor. Property was deeded Aug. 17, 1870, to Methodist denomination by David McKinney, purchaser of 200 acres from LaGrone's estate. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1973