Birth of a Lodge - Red Oak, Texas

Bell's Chapel was located just south of Rockett on Bell's Chapel Road. This community had its beginning in 1846 when John Bell, his family and his brothers, Joseph and Robert Bell, came from Virginia to this area. They built the first two log cabins on Brushy Creek in 1848. There were less than 100 people in the county in 1851, but through the next decade a steady stream of wagon trains came into the area. Many of them settled on Brushy Creek or Red Oak Creek.

Soon a group decided to build a Methodist church and buy land for a cemetery. In September, 1875, they acquired a deed for two and three-fourths acres of land from the Squire A. Rockett estate, paying $65 for it. The same year, John C. and Elizabeth Gibbons gave two and four-fifths acres of land to the Methodist Episcopal Church South, to be used for "a church, parsonage, burial ground, other church purposes, but for no other use whatsoever." Trustees at that time were G. C. Parks, George Butcher, William and James Sprowls, G. M. Butcher, Robert George, Samuel Uhl, and J. H. Swindell.

Red Oak Masonic Lodge No. 461 proposed to the trustees that its members be allowed to help with building the church and to add a second story which would be a meeting place for the lodge. This required removal of restrictions set by the Gibbons in the original deed, which was done by affidavit. At the same time, John and Elizabeth Gibbons bought (for $5) one-fifth acre of land from George Collins, which adjoined the original land given, and presented this deed to Joseph Bell, J. H. Burkhead, Burney Haynes, W. H. Ballard, J. W. Evans, S. M. Butcher and J. N. Lowrance. Masonic Lodge No. 461 was named in the deed with its committee of I. G. Culbertson, A. Wooden and T. J. Cole. Charter members of the Lodge were S. A. Bayless, James M. Burkhead, I. C. Culbertson, James M. Caldwell, J. W. Evans, T. J. Farrar, John S. Farrar, C. C. Gibbons, C. P. Hardesty, M. B. Lewis, C. M. Lea, W. C. Lewis, J. B. Merideth, John B. Owens, George C. Parks, J. H. Pierce, W. D. Robinson and Abram Wooden.

The church was under the Northwest Texas Conference, Lancaster district. Andrew Davis was first presiding elder of the church, and Rev. John S. Davis was one of the first pastors. For many years an active membership was maintained, among whom were the Harvey Lowrance family, John Gibbons, Mae Burkhead, Joe Marshall, Tom Stroud, George Butcher, Lewis Butcher, Jim Eagle, George Callin, John Owen, Dr. Conger, W. B. Haynes, N, R. Parchman, Joe and Catherine Bell, Mr. and Mrs. Meeks, Mrs. Jennie Fry, the Sam Hardesty family, the T. W. and M. R. Bryant families, Mrs. Cherry and daughter, the Miller family. Mrs. J. I. Davis, Mrs. Myrtle Powell and Mrs. Billy Bell joined the church in childhood.

n 1877, Jodie P. Bell, who had come as a small boy to this area, was the first to be buried in the cemetery which was named for him.  When the MK&T Railroad was built through the area in the 1880s, it bypassed Old Red Oak, and a new Red Oak grew up around the railroad station.

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