White Rock Chapel

George Coit, formerly enslaved, bought farmland and a small burial site beside White Rock Creek in 1878. In 1889 Coit, Giles Armstrong and Henry Keller founded the Colored Union Cemetery Association. The Kellers, both born into slavery, moved to Addison after finding that Collin County did not allow Black families to buy property, according to the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, and their farm spring gave Keller Springs Road its name. Taylor and Mary Ann Coit Tarpley raised fifteen children. In December 1960 the Celestial Road church burned in a fire authorities suspected was arson.

What the plaque says

White Rock Chapel Formed in the Freedman's community of Upper White Rock (settled by former slaves from the nearby Coit, Caruth and Obier plantations), White Rock Chapel Methodist Church was organized after a meeting at the home of George Coit. Founding members purchased land on White Rock Creek beside a small African American burial ground in early 1884 and constructed a log building. The first pastor, the Rev. Mr. Burse, served about 28 families until 1914. Frequent flooding was a problem for the congregation. According to oral history, the congregation sometimes spent days inside the building waiting for floodwaters to recede. A 1918 deluge drowned a family after a service; soon after, the congregation moved to this site on higher ground only a few hundred feet to the west. It was donated by S. S. Noell, an Anglo who was a frequent visitor to White Rock Chapel. The congregation was renamed Christian Chapel, C. M. E., in honor of its pastor, C. C. Christian. In 1960, a church member donated more land about a mile south. Most of the original congregation decided to relocate. After enduring the loss of their building from fire, remaining members reclaimed their original name, calling themselves White Rock Chapel Independent Methodist Church. In the fall of 1969, a large corporation claimed ownership of the three acres known as the White Rock Union Graveyard. Area churches banded together to fight the claim in court, securing a temporary restraining order. White Rock Chapel trustees continued the legal battle to preserve the land on which their church first met, finally prevailing in 1979. By the end of the 20th century, the church served a wide area of Dallas County, including residents of the cities of Dallas, Grand Prairie, Garland and Carrollton. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 11 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 — 12 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.
• Fair Park — 12 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 12 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Renner — 2.9 mi
• Hockaday School — 2.9 mi
• Frankford — 3.0 mi
• Demonstration of the First Working Integrated Circuit — 3.5 mi