GOLDEN RULE, TEXAS. Golden Rule, also known as Greer's Neighborhood, was four miles east of Mineola on what later became Farm Road 49 in southern Wood County. The community was probably first named for Gaines Greer, recipient of a land grant in the area and owner of a number of sawmills in Wood County. It is not known whether he operated one at Greer's Neighborhood. In August 1864 a Baptist church was organized there. The community's name was probably changed to Golden Rule by 1890, when the church reorganized under the name Stephen's Chapel Missionary Baptist Church and for a time met monthly at what was then called Golden Rule School. This school was said to have been near the site where Wood County was organized and where the county's first election was held; the site received a state historical marker in 1973. By 1896 the school, in the New Hope district, reported thirty-five white and eighty-nine black students. By 1902 the community's church had moved; it eventually became part of New Hope, two miles to the south. In 1905 the Golden Rule school reported thirty white and fifty-six black students. Golden Rule was not named on the 1936 county highway map, which showed a church and a school in the area, nor is the community labeled on the 1988 county highway map.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Marker Files, Texas Historical Commission, Austin. Wood County, 1850–1900 (Quitman, Texas: Wood County Historical Society, 1976).
