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Fuller, Viola (Fullen)

Viola died in 1907--the day following her 35th birthday--and preceding her husband by more than 40 years. She was buried at McMahan Chapel Cemetery. Her parents, children and husband were instead interred at the Rosevine Cemetery, established some five years after her untimely death. The newer cemetery was adjacent to the Rosevine Church of God, of which the Fuller family were members.

Status: Located

McMahan Chapel Cemetery, Sabine County, Texas, USA

Notes: Kay Parker McCary writes "McMahan's Chapel - Sabine County, Texas - From the Sabine County Court House in Hemphill, Texas go East one block on FM 83 to State Highway 87. Turn Left or North on Hwy 87 and go 7 miles to Milam. Take State Hwy 21 West 9.8 miles to Spur 35 or McMahan's Chapel Road. Turn Left on Spur 35 and go 2 miles to the cemetery on the Left. J. B. Sanders Cemetery Book (Abt 1963) lists 26 graves as being unmarked.
*GPS Coordinates: 3127313N - 09357903W ; First Marked Burial - 29 Jan 1846 ; Last Marked Burial - {3 Nov 2002}."

Directions and cemetery information copied from Kay P. McCary, who has inventoried and annotated this and many other Sabine County cemetery indexes, available online at:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~txsabine/burials/index.htm

McMahan's Chapel, organized in 1833, is the oldest Methodist church and the oldest Protestant congregation with continuous services in Texas. Samuel D. McMahan of Tennessee settled there in 1831 in what was then the San Augustine municipality of the Mexican government. In the spring of 1833 at Natchitoches, Louisiana, James Stevenson from the Sabine Circuit of Louisiana met some Texans who asked him to cross the state line and preach to them, even though Protestant services were forbidden in Mexican territory. Assured by the laymen of protection, Stevenson agreed and held a two-day meeting in a private home near the site of present Milam. McMahan attended the services and invited Stevenson to preach at his home also. He was requested to organize a church, but knowing that starting a Methodist church would be against the law, he formed instead a "religious society" of forty-eight members in September 1833. He named McMahan the "class leader." In July 1834 Henry Stephenson, successor of James P. Stevenson on the Sabine Circuit, reorganized the society in McMahan's home, and it was soon called McMahan's Chapel. After the Texas Revolution the McMahan congregation grew rapidly, and there was need for a church building. In December 1838 the Mississippi Conference appointed Littleton Fowler as presiding elder of the Texas Mission District. Fowler built a home near McMahan's place and made it his headquarters. About 1839 he assisted with the building of a log chapel, forty by thirty feet, for the McMahan congregation. The log structure was replaced by a frame church in 1872, and another of similar material was erected in 1900. The present brick building was dedicated in 1956. A cemetery containing the graves of Samuel D. McMahan, Littleton Fowler, and other early Methodist leaders in Texas adjoins McMahan Chapel.

From the Handbook of Texas Online

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/MM/ivm1_print.html

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