MINGS CHAPEL, TEXAS. Mings Chapel, on the Red Rock Road off U.S. Highway 271 six miles south of Gilmer in south central Upshur County, was established in the late 1850s or early 1860s and named for "Grandpa" Mings, a prominent early settler. A church and chapel were built there in the early 1860s. By 1900 three schools were operating in the community: two white schools with an enrollment of 108 and a black school with an enrollment of fourteen. At its height just after 1900, Mings Chapel had a cotton gin, a church, and several stores. In the mid-1930s the community consisted of a church, a store, a school, and a number of houses; the estimated population in 1940 was twenty. The number of residents reached a peak of forty in 1945 but declined afterward. By the mid-1960s all that remained of the community was a school and a few scattered houses; the Glade Creek Church was nearby. In 1990 Mings Chapel was a dispersed rural community. The population was listed as fifty in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. H. Baird, A Brief History of Upshur County (Gilmer, Texas: Gilmer Mirror, 1946). Doyal T. Loyd, A History of Upshur County (Gilmer, Texas: Gilmer Mirror, 1966).

Christopher Long