Fairland

FAIRLAND, TEXAS . Fairland is on Farm Road 1855 six miles north of Marble Falls in Burnet County. In the early 1850s a group of families from the eastern states settled on a strip of level land between Backbone Ridge and the Slaughter range, which they called "fair land." Early settlers were the R. S. Cates family in 1852 and the Lewis Thomas family. Others included John Harvey, a surveyor, Jefferson Barton, and the Atwoods, Grahams, Slaughters, Joys, Reeds, Alexanders, B. E. Fergusons, and Chessers. In 1859 Mrs. Senia Barton Harvey deeded land for a Methodist church and a school. The settlers soon began work on a stone building but were stopped by the Civil War , when many of the men left to fight. The building was not completed until 1870. Rev. Arter Crownover, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, held the first service, and a school was begun. On July 13, 1872, the third quarterly Methodist conference for Lampasas, Bear Creek Circuit, named the house and lot Crownover Chapel. When the church was finished, the community had a picnic. An extra wooden room was subsequently added to the rock building and used for the school for many years.