Historical Marker
Fate Presbyterian Church
Fate, Rockwall County · Texas
Erected 1986
Fate began as a nickname. Settler Lafayette Brown's wife called him Fate, the community took it, and a post office opened in 1880. In 1886, with the Katy railroad coming, Dr. Wylie T. Barnes platted Barnes City half a mile northeast on his land. Residents and businesses moved to it. To avoid applying for a new post office they restored the name Fate in February 1887. The first rural mail route in Texas began operating from Fate in 1899. In 1892 an attempt to make Fate the county seat failed.
What the plaque says
Fate Presbyterian Church When Presbyterians organized this congregation in the middle 1880s, the community of Fate was developing as a new settlement on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad. Among the eighteen individuals who chartered the church were members of the Leonard, Kale, McLendon, Cooper, Wilson, Bonsel, Morgan, Holiday, and Sawyer families. In the early years, a circuit rider served as minister of this and other area churches. One early circuit rider was the Rev. J.A. Hornbeak (d. 1939), who was serving as minister of the Fate Presbyterian Church in 1894 when the members constructed the first sanctuary. Located on Brown Street, it was built under the supervision of head carpenter H.A. Kale (1834-1921), a charter member of the congregation. The church continued to worship in the structure until the early 1920s. In 1926, a new church building was completed at this site. With historic ties to the earliest days of the Fate community, the Fate Presbyterian Church remains an important institution in Rockwall County. Church members have included many community leaders and pioneer area settlers. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Where it stands
32.94049, -96.38135 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 4.0 miA small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
- No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 17 miA free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
- Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 20 miA 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
- Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 21 miA Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.