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Historical
Marker TextBoyd
Chapel CommunitySettlements
began to develop in Jones County by the mid-1800s, first around the abandoned
Fort Phantom Hill site and then around
ranches founded in the 1880s and farms established shortly thereafter. At this
site in 1895, Reese Davis, Joe Swent and Alex Boyd built the Boyd School. The
community that developed nearby came to be known as Boyd Chapel.
Over
the next decades, Boyd Chapel was shaped by early area landowners. These included
Guy Arthur Hillier, a New York native who herded sheep from south Texas to this
area, where he met and married Minnie Estes. Alexander Brown Young and his wife
came to this area in 1897 from east Texas.
They settled in the Boyd Chapel community with five sons, including their oldest,
Thomas O. Young, who had a wife and family of his own. The Young family deeded
land for Methodist and Baptist churches, and a tabernacle, school and teacherage.
Judge L. Crow and his wife Dora built a unique house on a rise, using concrete,
as well as stone gathered from around the U.S.; they cultivated an orchard and
berry fields. In 1916, Raymond Young built a general store and gas station, the
only one in Boyd Chapel. As the farming community grew, cotton
became its primary crop.
As in much of rural Texas,
World War II greatly impacted
the community's population, with young adults serving in the Armed Forces or finding
work in urban centers in support of the war. In 1947, the school consolidated
into the Anson
school district. Today, only burials in the nearby Neinda Cemetery link the present
agricultural fields to the community known as Boyd Chapel.
(2006) |
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