Price’s Chapel is a small community southeast of Cleburne at the intersection of county roads 429 and 312.

At one time a Methodist Church and a large tabernacle were located there. Both of them are gone now.

In the early days, before air conditioning, many country churches held services in an open tabernacle in the summer to take advantage of any available breeze.

According to an old newspaper clipping, the old church building burned to the ground in November 1937, when a grass fire grew out of control and raced through the yard and little cemetery nearby.

When the church was rebuilt electric lights were put in and added to the old tabernacle.

But the old gas pipes used to conduct gas to the old-fashioned gas lamps were left hanging in the tabernacle.

These gas lights were a sure sign of progress in the little community because many similar tabernacles in similar communities were still using the old kerosene lamps, which hung around on the larger posts of the tabernacles.

Many old timers will remember how these old kerosene lights with the open flame popped, sputtered, gave off little light, and created an awful odor. 

The story goes that Price’s Chapel was named for a young preacher who conducted the first services in the old church building.

It happened that as the old church building burned, another preacher by the same name was conducting services in the Methodist Church, so the new church continued to be called Price’s Chapel. 

In the early part of the 20th century a cotton gin was located a short distance northwest of Price’s Chapel.

The gin was operated by Will Doak and H. H. Harrison.

The gin has been gone for many years, and cotton is no longer grown in the area.

No one remembers a store ever being at Price’s Chapel, but there was once a school there.

One-time Cleburne Postmaster Roy L. Doak and his brother, Hubert Doak, one-time city street foreman, both attended school there.

One of the more colorful of the early settlers was Uncle Elihu Matheson.

Uncle Elihu loved to fish. He would go fishing at the drop of the hat and sometimes when nobody dropped a hat.

If asked about how many fish he caught on one of his trips, Uncle Elihu would give his stock answer, “We catched all we et.”

He was one of the first fishermen to attach a bell on his trot line to give the alarm when a big one got on the hook.

Some of the early businessmen of Cleburne were from Price’s Chapel.

Among these early businessmen was W.J. Meals, an early settler of Price’s Chapel who became a Cleburne merchant before his death in 1931.

He had a son, Bill Meals, who co-owned the wholesale grocery firm Wooldridge and Meals, which was located on the southeast corner of East Chambers and South Wilhite, where Four-M Parts Warehouse is located.  

When we moved out on Island Grove Road in 1977, it had been only a few years since the city of Cleburne had stopped answering fire calls outside the city limits.

One Christmas day a house down the road from us caught fire and was a total loss.

The problem: They had to wait for the Keene fire trucks to get there.

This area was about midway between Keene, Grandview and Rio Vista, which had the only county fire departments for this area at that time.

Some of the local citizens called a meeting in 1979 at the Liberty Chapel school to discuss the idea of forming a volunteer fire department for the area.

Some of the leaders of this group were James Crocker, Jerome Cribbs and Bob Counts.

Over the next year money was raised through bake sales and various fund-raisers at Bob Counts’ store on Island Grove Road to obtain money to purchase a fire truck.

Enough money was raised to purchase the truck, and James Crocker was made fire chief.

While having the fund-raisers volunteers also looked for a place to build a fire station. 

They located some land next to the Price’s Chapel Cemetery that belonged to an out-of-county owner.

At that time the cemetery was overgrown with weeds, briars, etc.

It appeared that the cemetery had not been cleaned in several years.

A deal was worked out with the land owner for the men of the community to restore and maintain the cemetery for the land to put the fire station on.

By early 1981 the Liberty Chapel Volunteer Fire Department had two fire trucks and a two-bay fire station, all because of the generosity of the people in the community.

More has been added to the station over the years, including another three bays on the east end and an office complex and storage area on the west end.

Each year the LCVFD has a fundraising carnival at the fire house supplement fund they receive from the government. These fundraisers are usually held in September.

This shows that the pioneer spirit of all pulling together for the common good is alive and well in our rural communities.



John Watson is a Cleburne resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.