Lanes Chapel and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out on Hollis Prairie in Bosque County, a man named Joshua McCuistion did what a lot of the old pioneers did when they wanted to make a place feel like home. He donated land.

Not for a house, not for a store, but for a Methodist chapel, a place where the community could gather and worship and maybe feel a little less like they were at the edge of everything. Now, the man who actually built that chapel was John R. Lane, and he didn't do it alone.

He brought his sons into it, working the lumber and raising the walls sometime around 1880. They put it right next to a schoolhouse, which tells you something about what people on Hollis Prairie thought was important: faith and learning, side by side. The settlement that grew up around all of it was later named for the Lanes, which is fitting enough when you consider what they built there.

Right next to the chapel, a cemetery took shape, and the oldest marked grave in that cemetery belongs to a man named Plonzo Cox, who folks called Pompey. He was born in 1840 and died in 1880, the same year the chapel was completed. Think on that a moment.

The building goes up, and right away the ground beside it receives one of its own. Regular worship services carried on at Lanes Chapel for decades, all the way until 1960, when they were discontinued. But the story doesn't end there, and that's the part worth lingering on.

The Lanes Chapel Memorial Association was established to restore and maintain the building and the grounds, and every June, people come back. A homecoming, right there on Hollis Prairie. Joshua McCuistion gave the land.

John R. Lane and his sons built the walls. And every June, the people make sure neither one of those things gets forgotten.

What the marker says

Pioneer area settler Joshua McCuistion donated land at this site for a Methodist chapel to serve the community of Hollis Prairie. Completed about 1880 adjacent to a schoolhouse, it was built by John R. Lane and his sons, for whom the settlement was later named. The oldest marked grave in the church cemetery is that of Plonzo "Pompey" Cox (1840-1880). Regular worship services here were discontinued in 1960 and the Lanes Chapel Memorial Association was established to restore and maintain the building and grounds. A homecoming is held at this site each June. (1981)