Freestone County, Texas
Communities


Lake Chapel

The Lake Chapel community is located about two miles north of Ward Prairie 
on the road from Fairfield to the ghost town of Goetz towards the eastern 
part of Navarro county (next to the Trinity River). The area is drained by
Cox Creek on the west and PinOak Creek on the east. This is an area of 
farmers because of its open expanses of naturally clear land.  

Lake Chapel like its sister community of Ward Prairie is a farming community 
founded in one of the first areas that was naturally free of trees at the 
start of the prairie.  The reason that the area was naturally free of trees 
unknown to the early settlers was the coal fields that lay underneath. In 
modern times, the Big Brown Power Plant (a coal plant) is in the area.

Pioneers Simeon and Nancy Lake and their seven children settled in this area 
in the mid-1850s. They built a home, cleared the land, and began farming. The 
settlement which gradually built up around the Lake farm became known as Lake 
Chapel community after a small church was built on their property about 1856. 
Simeon Lake who appears in the 1870 census with his family and a school 
teacher.  Simeon later gave some land to the Methodist church and a cemetery.

The area church was known as Lake Chapel Methodist Church, but the building 
was also used by other denominations in the area. A schoolhouse was also 
constructed nearby, and two acres of land were set aside for a community burial 
ground. The earliest documented burial in the cemetery is that of the infant 
daughter of W. L. and Laura Lake Thornton. A granddaughter of Simeon and Nancy 
Lake, the child died at the age of five days in 1874. The church and school 
buildings were later moved from the property, and the graveyard's size was 
increased over the years. Among those interred here are members of the Lake 
and other pioneer families, as well as veterans of the Civil War, World War I, 
World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The diverse styles of grave markers which 
can be seen in the cemetery reflect the social history of the area, offering 
a glimpse into the customs and traditions of the past. 

The community had a school named Lakes Chapel School. The school house 
building was moved in February 1886 to Lake's Chapel to be in the center of 
the community. The school in 1893 had an enrollment of twenty-three students 
and in 1903 had an enrollment of twenty-four students. Soon afterward, Mr. F. 
P. Duggan was hired to be the teacher.  One wonders if the school building 
was damaged in the move because by October the community was trying to raise 
money for a joint church and school house building at the same location.  



School:
Lakes Chapel School
  moved in Feb. 1886
  45 pupils in 1887
  23 enrolled in 1893-94
  24 students in 1903

Churches:
Lake Chapel Methodist Church (1876-?)

Cemeteries:
Lakes Chapel Cemetery (1874-current)


Social Organizations:

Businesses:

Nearby Communities:



Known Past Residents:
Yates, Daniel Tomlinson