Shooks Chapel

Shooks Chapel, also known as Shooks, is a farming community on State Highway 154 four miles south of Sulphur Springs in south central Hopkins County. It was first settled around 1887, when a Methodist church was organized on land donated by Gus Joiner. Wiley W. Shooks, after whom the community was named, served as its first pastor. A one-room frame church was built in 1888, and in 1916 it was replaced by a larger building. By the mid-1930s Shooks Chapel consisted of the church, a cemetery, a school, and a number of scattered houses. The church continued to expand, and in 1950 an education annex with six classrooms and a kitchen was added. The school was eventually consolidated with the Sulphur Springs school district, and by the early 1960s only the church, the cemetery, and a few houses remained. In the late 1980s Shooks Chapel was a dispersed rural community.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.