Pelham

Navarro County, Texas

A map of where this is in the county. — 6.0 mi south-west of Malone · Navarro County

Wesley Chapel Methodist Church at Pelham, a small white frame church with a state historical marker beside it — Wesley Chapel, Pelham. Photograph: James Hulse, Historical Marker Database.

Founded as "Forks of the Creek" by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War; among the early settlers were Wade Westbrook's family, arrived from Alabama, the Sneed family, and Henry Carruthers, once enslaved on the nearby Lawrence plantation. The post office renamed it Pelham in 1900. The town held about 350 people in the 1920s; a few dozen remain, and it is one of a shrinking number of Texas freedom colonies still active rather than emptied out. A group of residents calling themselves the Guardians of Memory opened the Pelham Community History Museum in 2002 and hold a homecoming every October.

The churches came first. Wesley Chapel Methodist was organized at the forks in 1877, Brown Chapel A.M.E. followed in 1905, and Union Baptist in 1916.

School began inside Wesley Chapel in 1899. The Ash Creek School, built in the 1920s partly with Rosenwald Fund money, taught twelve grades until the high school closed in 1965; its last students went to Dawson in 1968.

The cemetery is kept by an association that has looked after it since the 1930s, and four state markers stand for the church, the school, the cemetery and the town.

The 69th Homecoming, in 2026, opens on Friday, October 9, with worship and music at Brown Chapel A.M.E.

The Texas Freedom Colonies Project counts Pelham among the eleven freedom colonies of Navarro County, the communities freedpeople built after emancipation. Field Note 008, The forks of the creek →

Pelham's community website · Pelham Community of Texas on Facebook · Pelham Community History Museum on Facebook · Carruthers & Porters of Pelham Texas, a family-history page

Also within two miles. Burying grounds: Pelham Cemetery · Markers: Wesley Chapel Methodist Church, Ash Creek (Pelham) School, Pelham Community.

Among the places · On the map

From Dallas Morning News, "On a quest to preserve history in Pelham, Texas," 18 November 2012; Texas Freedom Colonies Project (Dr. Andrea Roberts) directory and research writing on Pelham..