Argyle United Methodist Church
Argyle, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized thirteen years after the town of Argyle was founded, this church was chartered in 1894 with twenty-seven members. The first pastor was the Rev. Blueford Henry Webster, a Methodist circuit rider from Mississippi. Early worship services for the congregation were conducted in the Argyle Schoolhouse. In 1898 church trustees purchased land at this location from the Texas and Pacific railway and W. H. Abrams, company trustee. The first sanctuary, a frame structure, was built here soon afterward during the pastorate of the Rev. J. R. Atchley, who completed much of the carpentry work with the assistance of a Mr. Rhodes and several church members. Adjoining property was acquired by church trustees in 1947. A brick sanctuary was constructed here in 1969, east of the original structure, and an educational building was added in 1972. Part of a circuit for seventy-eight years, the Argyle United Methodist Church has played a significant role in the development of the town. Membership has included many prominent community leaders, and church facilities have been used for a variety of civic group meetings and public functions. (1981)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered in 1894 with twenty-seven members, this Methodist congregation began under circuit rider Blueford Henry Webster, worshipping in the Argyle schoolhouse until it bought land from the Texas and Pacific railway in 1898. The Rev. J.R. Atchley did much of the carpentry on the first frame sanctuary himself, and over the decades—seventy-eight years of them on a preaching circuit—the church became a center of civic life in Argyle.
Why it matters
The story of a frontier circuit rider building his own sanctuary captures how itinerant Methodist preachers planted churches and community across the settling American West.
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Related people
- · Blueford Henry Webster
- · J.R. Atchley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Graham-Argyle Cemetery
Argyle, TX
This burial ground served the farming community of Graham that grew here after the Civil War, its first known grave that of the infant George Isbell in December 1865. A nearby structure housed both a school and Graham Baptist Church. When settlers shifted to Argyle on the Texas and Pacific Railroad after 1881, the school and church followed, and the land was formally deeded for cemetery use in 1888; volunteers began restoring its roughly 238 graves in 1974.
Argyle
Argyle, TX
First settled in the 1850s by families of the Peters Colony land grant, this Denton County community became the town of Argyle in 1881 when a Galveston developer platted it along a new rail line. Neighboring settlements fed its early growth, and several small country schools eventually consolidated into its district. A fire leveled the business district in 1895, but residents rebuilt, and the town has since ridden the tides of nearby urban growth.
Johns' Well and Campgrounds
Argyle, TX
In 1884 members of the Prairie Mound Methodist Church set aside this ground as a religious campground, its brush arbor sheltering worship during ten-day summer camp meetings. A dependable well—named for former owner Hardin Johns—drew not only campers but settlers and travelers passing through. As nearby communities built their own churches the meetings faded, and the land was sold in 1913, though the well served neighbors until 1963.
Prairie Mound Cemetery
Argyle, TX
Prairie Mound Cemetery was in use by 1882, the year adjoining land was deeded to the Prairie Mound Methodist Episcopal Church, South; its oldest marked grave is that of little Edgar Myers, who died in 1878. A nearby public school, organized in 1878, and the church anchored this Denton County farming community for decades before both faded—the school consolidated away in the 1940s and the original sanctuary removed in 1961. Many pioneer settlers of the Argyle-Justin area rest here.