Church of Our Merciful Saviour
Kaufman, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Rural Gothic architecture. In parish formed 1883. Site given 1898; built 1909 under lead of Mr. and Mrs. Woodson Nash. Consecrated May 2, 1909, by The Rt. Rev. A. C. Garrett, first bishop of Missionary District of Northern Texas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Rural Gothic sanctuary grew from an Episcopal parish formed in Kaufman in 1883. With a site given in 1898 and construction led in 1909 by Mr. and Mrs. Woodson Nash, the church was consecrated that May by the Rt. Rev. A. C. Garrett, first bishop of the Missionary District of Northern Texas. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967.
Why it matters
Small-town Gothic churches like this one carried the architecture and institutions of the Eastern establishment into the growing communities of post-Reconstruction Texas.
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Related people
- · A. C. Garrett
- · Woodson Nash
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church
Kaufman, TX
Organized in 1845 as a Methodist Episcopal congregation in the town then called Kingsborough—soon renamed Kaufman—this church took root just as Texas joined the Union. From a first building in 1857 to a white-frame steepled sanctuary in 1876 and a substantial brick church in 1909, its successive buildings chart the growth of a North Texas county seat. Each stage was led by a named circuit-era pastor.
Kaufman County
Kaufman, TX
Created and organized in 1848 in the first years of Texas statehood, this county took the name of David Spangler Kaufman, a lawyer who reached Nacogdoches in 1837 and rose through the Congress of the Republic of Texas before winning a seat in the U.S. Congress. The marker stands in the county seat that also bears his name, a common frontier practice of anchoring a new county's identity to a favorite son. Kaufman's short life spanned the arc from independent republic to American state.
Mrs. William P. King
Kaufman, TX
Frances A. King came to the Republic of Texas alongside her husband, founder of King's Fort in 1840, and pioneered on the frontier with notable courage. After his death in 1846 she—by then Mrs. Tabor—campaigned to make Kingsborough the seat of the newly organized Kaufman County and won. In April 1851 she deeded 75 acres for the townsite and a matching timber tract to the county commissioners, and the fort's settlement grew into the town that shares the county's name.
Colonel Isham Chisum
Kaufman, TX
Isham Chisum was among Kaufman County's leading early citizens, representing it at the Texas Secession Convention in early 1861. He then rode with Col. Tom Green's Confederate cavalry in the New Mexico campaign and, as colonel of the 2nd Partisan Rangers in Walker's Division, fought at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the 1864 Red River Campaign that turned back a Federal invasion of Texas. He was a cousin of trailblazers Jesse Chisholm and cattle baron John Simpson Chisum.