Missouri native Alexander Moore married Virginia native Mary Jane Jones in St. Genevieve, Missouri, in 1856, and they moved to Texas and purchased land in this area in 1857. In the mid-1870s, the Moores donated two acres here to a rapidly growing community for cemetery purposes. The first recorded burial was that of Martha Cashion, an early pioneer settler and a friend and neighbor of the Moores, on March 11, 1876. Area Baptists erected a sanctuary just north of the cemetery on land donated by the Moores, and it became known as Moore's Chapel Church; the community and cemetery also came to be known as Moore's Chapel. An unusually high number of infant burials during the 1880s and 1890s reflect an outbreak of typhoid fever. Alexander Moore was buried here in 1896, and after his death his widow Mary donated an additional three acres to the cemetery in 1901; she was buried here in 1915. Moore's Chapel Cemetery and the adjacent church and school buildings formed the community center, and the cemetery contains the graves of many area pioneer settlers, their descendants, and veterans of wars from the Civil War to World War II. It is maintained by an association and continues to serve the community.