Lake Grove Community

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Grimes County, there was a loosely-knit farm community called Lake Grove. Loosely-knit.

That's the marker's own word for it, and I appreciate the honesty. Not every community arrives tight and tidy. Some of them have to be stitched together, slowly, parcel by parcel.

And in 1874, the stitching started with four acres of land. Two law partners, Ben Goodrich and H. H.

Boone, donated that land right here at this location to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Now, H. H.

Boone was no ordinary country lawyer. He served as Texas Attorney General from 1876 to 1878. But before all that, he and Goodrich put their names on a deed and handed over four acres for church, school, and cemetery use.

For the community. Just like that. The community did not wait around.

They promptly built a church structure, and that building pulled double duty from the start, serving both religious and school purposes. That's the kind of efficiency you get when people have been waitin' on something for a while. By 1900, a hundred students were attending the Lake Grove School.

A hundred. Out here in a community the marker itself called loosely-knit. There's something almost defiant about that number.

And then there's the cemetery. The Lake Grove Cemetery is still active today, with gravestones dating all the way back to 1874, the very year this all began. Among those buried there rests a veteran of the American Civil War.

No fanfare, no monument to his name in the marker text, just that quiet fact sitting at the end of the story. Four acres, a deed, a church, a school, a hundred children, and a soldier beneath the East Texas soil. That's Lake Grove.

What the marker says

Grimes County law partners Ben Goodrich and H. H. Boone (Texas Attorney General 1876-78), donated four acres of land at this location to trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1874 for church, school, and cemetery use by the surrounding loosely-knit farm community of Lake Grove. The community promptly built a church structure that they used for religious and school purposes. 100 students attended the Lake Grove School in 1900. The still active Lake Grove Cemetery, with gravestones dating to 1874, contains the grave of a veteran of the American Civil War.