Chapel of the Cross, Gothic Revival chapel in Madison County, United States

The Chapel of the Cross is a brick Episcopal church in the Mannsdale area of Madison, Mississippi, built circa 1850–52. Its Gothic Revival design draws heavily on 14th-century English country churches, with pointed arches and tall windows. Enslaved people made all of the bricks by hand on site.

John T. Johnstone established Annandale plantation and planned a family chapel but died in 1848; his widow Margaret commissioned the building, which enslaved people on the plantation made by hand, firing all bricks on site. Johnstone spent $3,000 and deeded the church and 10 acres to the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi in June 1851. Bishop William Mercer Green consecrated it on September 19, 1852. The parish was declared extinct in 1903 and reactivated in 1911 through granddaughter Margaret Britton Parsons.

The name Annandale echoes the Scottish earldom of Annandale and Hartfell, which tradition says the Johnstone family once held. Local lore, recorded in Kathryn Tucker Windham's "The Ghosts of Annandale", holds that Helen Johnstone's ghost weeps at the grave of her fiancé Henry Grey Vick, killed in a duel in Mobile on May 17, 1859 and buried behind the church.

The building welcomes visitors during regular hours to see the architectural details up close, though it is worth checking opening times ahead of your trip. Its rural location means you will need a car to reach it comfortably.

The chapel's churchyard holds the grave of Henry Grey Vick, fiancé of Helen Johnstone, killed in a duel in Mobile, Alabama, on May 17, 1859, days before their wedding. Local lore, recorded in books by Kathryn Tucker Windham and others, says Helen's ghost weeps at the grave.