Chinn's Chapel Methodist Church

Chinn's Chapel was a settlement as well as a church. The Handbook of Texas says Elisha Chinn established it in 1853, and it later split into three small communities named Shiloh, Waketon and Bartonville. Copper Canyon, where the church now stands, came much later: it incorporated on April 23, 1973, with Robert B. Woodin as first mayor, and its founders included Bill Ferris, Arthur Huston and Betty Harmon. The Handbook adds that the town has no commercial development and relies on neighboring cities for services such as police and fire protection.

What the plaque says

Chinn's Chapel Methodist Church This church began as a nondenominational congregation organized by pioneer settlers of the Peters Colony in 1846. Itinerant preachers were invited to hold services in a log church/school building located about one quarter mile northwest of here. The log chapel was on 10 acres called Antioch donated by North Carolina immigrants Mary Stowe Chinn (1808-1871) and Elisha Chinn (1802-1876) for church and cemetery purposes. The church was admitted to the North Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1872, as Chinn's Chapel Methodist Church. Sunday School classes began that year. In 1877 the church purchased 4 acres here at the site of freshwater springs and early camp meetings. A sanctuary was erected and a tabernacle built for summer revivals. The property also included a combination Woodmen of the World Lodge Hall/public school from 1884 to 1921. Chinn's Chapel served as the main gathering place for the area. Though membership declined sharply after World War II, the church endured. Through denominational merger it became Chinn's Chapel United Methodist Church in 1968. Local efforts to revive the institution began in the late 1980s, and an active membership was reestablished. The building was renovated in 1996. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 9.6 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 25 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 26 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 26 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.

More markers nearby

• Bartonville — 2.8 mi
• Peters Colony — 4.5 mi
• 1848 Denton County Seat — 4.7 mi
• Flower Mound — 4.8 mi