Hamil's Chapel

Grice, at the junction of Farm roads 852 and 1002, twelve miles west of Gilmer in western Upshur County, was established in the late 1880s or early 1890s near a heavily wooded area known as the Big Woods. The community was originally called Hamil's Chapel for a small Baptist church 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. By 1896 the community had a gristmill and cotton gin, a general store, a wagonmaker, two carpenters, and an estimated population of twenty-four. A Grice school began operating before 1900, and by 1907 it had an enrollment of 126. Around 1900 the town also had a saloon. After 1900 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; its population in 1936 was estimated at twenty. After World War II the Grice school was consolidated with the Harmony consolidated school district, and in the mid-1960s all that remained of Grice was a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered houses. In 1990 Grice was a dispersed community with an estimated population of 20 to 150. The population remained the same in 2000.