Rock Church Cemetery

Hood County, Texas

Located off US Highway 377 south past Tolar, Texas take FM Road 2870 south to intersection of Loftin Road and just before Baker's Crossing Road with FM 2870, Rock Church Cemetery is to the left on bank of Paluxy River.

The Rock Church Cemetery was established in the early 1870's when Jessie Caraway an early settler to Hood County from Gibson County, Tennessee (1857) donated land to settle a dispute between local church members, who were incensed when a dance was held in the double-pin dogtrot log cabin at Bethel Community, located a few miles south and down a short dirt road off present day Baker's Crossing Road. The Bethel log cabin was used as a church and school by the Baptist, Methodist, and Christian itinerant circuit riding ministers to serve the early settlers in the Paluxy River Valley.

The dispute erupted when an itinerant dance teacher visited the settlement and taught classes in the Bethel log cabin. Some of the younger members of the community hungry for culture, wanting to show off their new dancing skills, held a Saturday night dance in the building and when the parishoners came to church on the following Sunday morning, evidence of the dance held the night before was there for all to see.

A violent dispute broke out in the Bethel Community over this and one pious church member wanted to remove the floor of the log cabin and turn it over because the dance had desecrated the building. Needless to say, the dispute tore apart the community. Forever after this episode, the name of Bethel was forgotten and the community was referred to as "Vinegar Hill" for the bitter feelings the dance had engendered.

The earliest burial in Rock Church Cemetery is dated May 30, 1873, when Sarah (McGill) Brooks, wife of Zachariah Brooks died from St. Anthony's Fire. Her casket-like limestone tombstone at one time had the inscription, "lst one put here" There are several hundred graves in this cemetery, and many are marked only with crude head and foot stones.

On the land donated by Jesse Caraway, the community built a large two story structure, constructed from hand hewn limestone rock from a local quarry and held together with homemade lime mortar. The local community now takes its name from this structure. Jesse Caraway deeded the land for the use of the community and the Baptist, Christian and Methodist congregations were to have use of the building for five years, after which it was to be under the auspices of the Methodist Church.

The building housed the church-going commuity and Marvin's Chapel School, as well as the upstairs was given for meetings of the newly organized Paluxy Masonic Lodge Number 393. The foot-thick walls of the building was also suitable for refuge from indian attacks.

Jesse Caraway, and Lorenzo Dow Wood, another early settler and staunch Methodist exhorter, canvased the community for help with the labor and construction costs. The building was completed in 1873 and the first school class was held there that year, with James T. Williams as the first teacher.

When William H. Caraway, son of Jesse Caraway died in October 1890, his wife Kizzie Emma (Wood) Caraway, sold another five and one half acres from the tract of land Jesse had granted to his son and her husband when they married, to the local trustees of the Methodist Church for an extension of the cemetery.

The little white chapel now know as Rock Church Chapel was constructed adjacent to the rock structure and was deeded to the Methodist Episcopal Church South about 1907 and 1908. It served the community for Methodist church services until the 1970's when most of the congregation had died or moved away.

The Methodist Episcopal Church South has since donated the struture to the Rock Church Cemetery Association, and a yearly Homecoming is held there each year on the second Sunday in October, when again the strains of the old song "Church in the Wildwood" ring forth from the throats of the descendants of the early pioneers of this community.