GRICE, TEXAS
formerly Hamil's Chapel

Grice, Texas is located at the junction of Farm roads 852 and 1002, twelve miles west of Gilmer in western Upshur County. It was established in the late 1880s or early 1890s near a heavily wooded area known as the "Big Woods". (My grandparent's land adjoined the "Big Woods".) The community was originally called Hamil's Chapel, for a small Methodist Church (where Baptist also gathered) that was organized not long after the Civil War. Around 1890, John J. Grice opened a store and post office there. The post office became known as Grice, but the church continued for several years to be known as Hamil's Chapel.

Old Grice by late 1890's used to be a small town-like community with plank sidewalks, school, barber shop, saw mill, cotton gin, lumber plainer, post office, a general store with the Woodsman Hall atop, saloon, and two churches, Hamil's Chapel Methodist (also used by the Baptist). My great, great grandfather, Abe Cross, established his blacksmith shop where he also received requests to pull teeth. The small town's business district was located south of where the cemetery and Antioch Baptist Church still stand. The road of "Old Grice" turns right past the church & dead ends into FM 1002 - Abe Cross' blacksmith shop sat on the left hand corner where this road dead ends. If you failed to turn left or right on FM 1002 you would drive into my late aunt Bernice Cross Poole's house.

Grice not only had its Christian residents, but also contained some unruly sorts. In fact, Abe CROSS, who moved with his family to Upshur Co (migrating from TN) in the late 1890's, almost passed up on living in Grice due to his first visit and recalling "drunken" men lying about on the sidewalks.

One of the earlier settlers that moved to Grice, did so to start a new life. He had previously been running with his cousin's "gang" ... his cousin was none other than Jesse JAMES. Shortly after he arrived in Grice the "law" came around asking some in the community if there had been any "newcomers". It happened that the ones asked, knew this "settler" and liked him, so they told the "law", "no". The "settler" changed his name, began a new life, became a law abiding citizen and raised a large family - some of his descendant's still live in and around Grice today, however, I am not sure if they know anything of this, so for that reason I have left out his name.

My great grandfather, Loyd Dacus, having been recently widowed, moved his family from Lookout Mountain in GA to Ft Worth, Texas where he worked lighting the "street lamps" and then "putting them out" in the mornings. He later moved to Grice, abt 1911, where he bought the mill, gin, lumber plainer, and general store. He later moved to Marshall and opened a furniture factory and operated a traveling theater where he showed movies. He later returned to Grice where he lived out the remainder of his life.

The Grice school began operating before 1900, and by 1907 it had an enrollment of 126. After the mid 1900's Grice began to decline. The Marshall and East Texas Railway bypassed the town, and many community residents moved away. The Grice post office closed in 1905. By the mid-1930s the community had a school, two churches, and two or three stores. Later Grice School along with Rhonesboro - Rosewood - Little Mound - Latch - Soules Chappell - Enon - Peach - Honey Creek & others formed what is now know as Harmony School District. This consolidation caused quite an uproar in the Communities and Grice was no different. The consolidation was met with much opposition from all parties concerned.

In the 1950's thru the mid 1970's Grice consisted of a small grocery store complete with two gas pumps, Antioch Baptist Church and Grice Cemetery. The grocery store which was ran by my grandparents, Lamon "Mutch" Cross (1900-1974) & Annie Dacus Cross (1903-1972) was later ran by Glen Royce Cross after my grandmother became ill. The store later burned & all that remains is the old "feed house" that sits on an empty lot at the cross roads of 852 & Giraffe Rd - that leads to the church and cemetery.

GRICE CEMETERY

Grice Cemetery is a non-church, non-family operated cemetery. The financial operation of the cemetery is made possible by contributions and the purchase of plots. Situated across the road (and a little North of) from Antioch Baptist Church, the cemetery is well kept and maintained. Buried are both individuals that have no other family buried there, but in most cases, there are generations of families. Also situated among marked graves are those whose only monument is old native rocks, with any engraving or memories of who lies beneath them long eroded with time.

Established around 1864. Tobe Davis (1859-1932), N.H. Morris and W. Scott (1895-1963) & Livie Brice (1899-1986) were the first recorded to donate land for the cemetery. Although clearly the cemetery was established around 1864 when Tobe was about 12 years old. Tobe was the eldest of the 3 donors and there is no grave found for N.H. Morris.

Clearly Tobe Davis did not donate land until he was at least 21-years old, which would have been after 1880, with land records placing him in ownership of surrounding lands circa 1895. W. Scott & his wife, Livie did not donate land until W. Scott Brice was at least 21-years old, which would have been after 1915. Not having the age of N.H. Morris, it cannot be determined when he donated land. The original land grantor is unknown to me at this time.

With the original "recorded" land donated by Tobe DAVIS and later by N.H. MORRIS, Scott & Livie BRICE donating more land the cemetery. In 1950, one-acre was purchased from Herman and Susie (Davidson) Gibson. In 1980, an acre was purchased from Helen Norma (Gibson) Schwarz. As of 2001, the cemetery was approximately 3-1/2 acres in size. It is located on Giraffe Road, in the Grice Community of Upshur County, Texas.

READ ON!

The following was furnished me by Milton Dacus. It not only contains information on the cemetery but also contains some interesting stories on some of those that once lived in "Old Grice".

GRICE CEMETERY
The Fact - The Record - The Legend
by Milton O DACUS
(1926-2002)

My earliest recollections of the cemetery at Grice, aside from the profound awe in which such places once were held by children, are of the old woven-wire fence, the big digging tools, and the grave of Jacob SCHRUM. Most of the gravestones stand erect, but Milton O DACUS 'S is a great slab of stone, now lying flush with the ground. In those days the slab was elevated on concrete sides so as to form a big stone box. I wouldn't go within fifty yards of it.

Years passed. I lost somewhere my dread of the patriarch's monument. More years passed and I learned all about the big tools. We used to dig graves here three-feet-and-a-vault. Men and boys from all over would gather to dig, to advise, to socialize. That spot of ground, beyond any doubt, is the hardest two acres of red clay on the entire earth. Swing that heaviest old mattock a long swing (listen to your teeth, how they rattle). Watch it bounce off that flint-like firmament. See if you made so much as a dent.

The clay goes all the way to the top (possibly a little further). A dynasty of busy caretakers, dating back further than does my memory, has plied the ground with industrious hoes, until now all the light dirt has ridden the rains away to extinction. Still the clay is there.

Several years ago we had to take in more ground. So we replaced the old woven wire with chain-link fence, and had a nice, big wrought-iron sign put up over the gate proclaiming, "Grice Cemetery". That is what I came to talk about.

We're used to calling it Grice Cemetery now, and I imagine nothing else would sound quite right to us. But it has not always been so. The records say it once was Hamil's Chapel Graveyard. And if we're to pay attention to the legend, it may have, in the old days, been Poverty Flat Burying Ground. Or, if you like, Horse Thief Memorial Park (for reasons we presently shall see).

Now we've always been a progressive-minded people here. We have stayed just the same all along, but we've changed our name from time to time. As near as I can figure it, that fits the modern-day description of progress.

John J. GRICE, an early-day merchant and our first postmaster (1890), gave us his name. He also gave us a part of the record that is written in stone, for one of the stones there reads, "L.I., wife of J.J. GRICE, died May 23, 1890."

Hamil's Chapel was a Methodist church, but by an amicable arrangement, the Primitive Baptists also met there. Both congregations laid their dead here. Around Rhonesboro they have deep sand. Since this makes for even more difficult burial conditions than our hard clay, most people from over there have put their dead away here with ours from earliest times. From the latter '60s until about the turn of the century, our cemetery went by the name of Hamil's Chapel.

I have seen no recorded evidence that our cemetery ever went by the name of Poverty Flat. The locality bore that name, though, if we may believe a legend that lives and persists. Certainly the name is aptly chosen. And there is a flat, of sorts. It lies along the Simpsonville Road from about the old P. (Paschal) K. WILLIAMS homestead place (the Fred BELL place), on down past 'New Grice' at the crossroads, about to the Joe DAVIS place. The old folks may have seen indications of poverty thereabouts. None of them are left to remember.

The beginnings of this old graveyard are shrouded in obscurity. Uncle Tobe DAVIS was donor of the original and much smaller plot. But we were in business here even before Uncle Tobe's time. The deed records place him in ownership of surrounding lands circa 1895, and that aforementioned Jacob SCHRUM of the Fearsome Box took his departure on March 14, 1871. No earlier inscribed dates may be found (a new marker is inscribed, "WILLIAMS Infant 1864"), yet rough native stone marks many a weathered mound that very well may have been made before was made the final resting place of that staunch old soldier and builder. Further, we have the spoken recollection of one other fondly remembered patriarch, born in the mid-fifties, of having passed the cemetery, as a child, on his way to the mill. That mill might well have been one or the other of the HORNE mills, the earliest of which ran as early as August, 1860.

The story of the Grice Cemetery would be poorly told without recounting the Horse Thief Legend. Like any proper sort of legend, this one cannot be substantiated. But it would be unthinkable to allow it to fade away after being handed down, with embellishments, from one generation to the next over this good span of years.

The most often-told of the several versions goes like this:
Long ago, before the invention and promulgation of police brutality, a horse thief was apprehended, hanged, and buried on a neighboring piece of land. Now the owner of that land pretty soon encountered a man who might have bought it, except for its offensive subterranean occupant. Whereupon (or so goes the legend) the owner, who was needing the money, promptly exhumed the malefactor's remains and reburied him where this cemetery was to grow up around his grave.

I don't know if the man sold his land or not, after going to so much trouble to purify it, but I can show you the grave. If you don't wish to go away believing the legend I don't advise you to touch it, even be it empty, as one version contends.

You could modify this bizarre tale a little and make a believable one, if you were to read Oba ROBERTS' deed to David LEE of November 30, 1852. Oba ROBERTS was or had been the sheriff of an infant Upshur County at that time. I imagine horse thieves were not rare hereabouts. Immigrant trains were frequent and susceptible fare for a man skillful in that trade.

Wood County, not then organized nor "lawed up", was a conveniently accessible haven for a man with fast-moving merchandise to put under wraps.

Mr. ROBERTS had a duty as the sheriff to discourage such practice of horse-thievery. I expect summary justice like the legend speaks of was considered a part of his duty, criminal code notwithstanding. Some are bound to look upon this practice as a crude handling of due process, and to point with some horror to the defendant's undeniable lack of legal counsel. Our only rebuttal could be that the prosecution had no legal representation, either.

One version of the legend shoots the horse thief, rather than hanging him. On the premise that hang-ropes snap less often than do guns, a man truly would have found scant incentive to halt, upon order, so close to Wood County and immunity. If they had to shoot a man here, they missed the use of the great old, heavy-limbed oaks, perfect hanging trees, growing here to this day.

When Sheriff ROBERTS sold the ancient Wm H. BEAVERS headright to Mr. LEE, he retained a quarter-section (160 acres) for himself. The transaction is duly recorded on page 290 of Volume D, Upshur County Deed Records. Mr. ROBERTS specifically rejects the northeast quarter-section. Grice Cemetery lies in that 160 acres. All other considerations being equal, there had to be some reason Oba ROBERTS DIDN'T WANT THAT PIECE OF GROUND.

Some say that Aunt Betty SMITH was the first person buried here. Others claim that a man shotgunned by John CALHOUN was first. Ask a dozen people. Get a dozen answers. Someone was first. Nobody knows for sure but that it was that much-discussed, nameless horse thief who, upon some bitter hour of some early day and year, became founder of our burying ground.

The MOON family buried a young son in 1884, not here but on a little knoll near their home, on the old MOON place just west of Mrs. Bernice (CROSS) POOLE'S home place. They harbored no malice toward cemeteries. They just wanted to keep him near. But they all are gone to their own far distant graves these many, many years and that deserted hill is such a lonesome place that I don't like to go there anymore.

Should anyone see a need to add to, or take from, or otherwise to alter this poor tale, or have any altogether different story to tell, will he kindly tell it to me? (Milton Dacus)

GILBERT LEROY, Man of Letters
written by Milton O DACUS
(1926-2002)

There is a farm here in Grice that is still known to some of us as the LeROY Place. It was here that Uncle Tom BURNETT lived for many years until his passing, and it will rightly be called the Tom BURNETT Place henceforth a long time.

Gilbert LeROY also lived there for a long while prior to his death. Regrettably, we do not know the date of his demise or his place of burial, but his sojourn here undoubtedly added much to the educational development of our locality in that era during and after the War of Secession.

A smallish man, a bachelor, a Scotsman to his rusticated and unlettered neighbors, Gilbert LeROY no doubt was a curiosity, perhaps a laughingstock. But he was all the while a highly educated, even a brilliant man. For a while he made his home in the household of the elder P.K. WILLIAMS, who seemed to attract learned people of his day.

Sometime, perhaps in early 1860, Professor LeROY married a well-to-do widow, one Mrs. Sarah DYER, who brought her money and her several daughters into the partnership. The family settled on the David STINSON Headright, a 320-acre tract purchased of Michael ROGERS, lying about a mile north of Ed HORNE's water mill (It is the birthplace and homeplace of this writer).

Right away a new school appeared in the Poverty Flat neighborhood. The LeROY Institute was located on the same grounds that later held Grice and Ferguson Schools, a short way west of Grice Cemetery. It is mentioned in the county deed records (Q-687, U-461). Nathan MORRIS donated the land out of his considerable holdings in the William H. BEAVERS headright.

Professor LeROY did not go to war. True, he came out of a war-like race. The Scots have for many centuries fought for the sheer love of fighting. But this was not his war. Just arrived here, he could hardly assume the attitudes of a native in the manner of a man pulling on his boots.

Before the war was over, Professor LeROY had sold most of his land but still had incurred sizable debts with Simpsonville merchants Woodson WRIGHT and Irwin AYRES. In 1869, he sold out his Stinson property and in 1870 purchased of Jim STARKEY the place that is called by LeROY's name.

In the 1870s, in addition to his teaching duties, he served for a time as County School Superintendent (see Q447, 584, 687), buying in behalf of the county several school buildings and lots from the various districts, including his own LeROY Institute, Lafayette, Gilmer, Double Springs (Rosewood) and others, mostly paying in county warrants.

During this period a congenial group of well-educated people often met at Grice, then called Hamil's Chapel. These included Professor LeROY, P.K. WILLIAMS, J.M. GLASCO, Dr. McKINNON of Callaway, and the accomplished builders, John, Jacob, and Elisha SCHRUM.

It must have been about this time that the learned man compiled his unpublished work on physics. Pack WILLIAMS recalls having seen a manuscript many years after Professor LeROY's death, and describes a novel theory that he advanced as to the cause of rain. He tells us that some clouds carry a surcharge of oxygen while others are laden with hydrogen. When these achieve correct juxtaposition and counterpoise, the reaction is rain. He just could be right. He also wrote a novel casting his neighbors as characters. I wish I had those two books.

Gilbert LeROY may have taught at the Long Branch School as well as some others nearby. The Long Branch would have been nearer to his home than the LeROY Institute. There is much that we do not know and cannot learn. We have to guess a lot. We know that he was a notary public as late as 1887 and that he was gone and had left Sarah a widow by 1897. He was a man, and thus was subject to a man's failings, but he left us better off than he found us and maybe, oddly enough, at one time caused my little neighborhood here to be known as one of the most educated places in Upshur County.

If anyone sees a need to add to or take from or otherwise alter this poor tale, or has any entirely different story to tell, let him kindly tell it to me. (Milton Dacus)