Petty's Chapel

Petty's Chapel is a mile northeast of Corsicana in central Navarro County. Recorded history of the site begins with an 1852 Cumberland Presbyterian camp meeting on the north bank of Chambers Creek. The meeting lasted ten to fourteen days and was attended by members of all denominations. The town that eventually developed at the site took its name from early settler George V. Petty, who donated land in 1870 for the building of a school. Methodists led by R. Q. Mills built the first church at Petty's Chapel around 1885; Andrew Davis served as the first pastor. In 1906 Petty's Chapel had one school for White students, with one teacher and an enrollment of forty-eight, and a separate school for Blacks, with one teacher and an enrollment of sixty-five. The 1936 county highway map showed scattered dwellings and two each of schools, churches, businesses, and cemeteries at the townsite. Petty's Chapel had a population of forty and two businesses in 1939. By 1990 the population of Petty's Chapel had dropped to twenty-five, and no businesses were reported there. The population remained at twenty-five in 2000.