Bethel Methodist Church
Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1853 Bethel Church was begun under a brush arbor at High Springs. After meeting in a log school building at Greathouse, services were moved in 1860 to a schoolhouse at Bethel on Baker's Branch. The first meetinghouse, built south of the cemetery in 1872, was destroyed in an 1892 storm. The second, located north of the cemetery, was replaced in 1924 by the present sanctuary. The tabernacle, built in 1907, served for camp meetings and God's Acre sales. A parsonage, erected in the early 1900s on E.M. Brack's land at Boz, was moved to this site in 1952.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bethel's Methodist congregation traces to an 1853 brush arbor at High Springs, meeting in log schoolhouses before raising its first frame meetinghouse in 1872. Storm and time claimed successive buildings, the present sanctuary rising in 1924, while a 1907 tabernacle hosted the camp meetings and "God's Acre" sales that knit the rural community together. The story is a century of frontier faith rebuilt again and again on Baker's Branch.
Why it matters
It preserves the pattern by which itinerant Methodism organized scattered Texas farm families into lasting communities across the nineteenth century.
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Themes & tags
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