Church of St. Mark, The Evangelist, Episcopal
Honey Grove, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation was organized in 1876 by the Rt. Rev. Alexander C. Garrett, bishop of the Missionary District of Northern Texas, and later bishop of Dallas. In 1883, this building was constructed during the ministry of the Rev. J. P. Lytton. Of wood frame construction, the Gothic revival structure features lancet windows and a varnished pine interior with a cathedral ceiling. It stands as a reminder of Honey Grove's pioneer heritage. RTHL - 1984
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1876 as northern Texas emerged from Reconstruction, this Episcopal congregation raised its Gothic revival sanctuary in 1883 during the Rev. J. P. Lytton's ministry. Its wood-frame form, lancet windows, and varnished pine interior beneath a cathedral ceiling reflect the modest but aspiring church architecture of a frontier Texas farming town. The building has stood as a touchstone of Honey Grove's pioneer-era community for well over a century.
Why it matters
Small-town churches like this anchored newly settled communities across post-Civil War Texas, giving scattered pioneer families a shared civic and spiritual center.
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Related people
- · Alexander C. Garrett
- · J. P. Lytton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Honey Grove
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Organized in 1847 by a Southern Baptist missionary, this congregation began with nine members meeting in a log schoolhouse in the earliest years of Anglo settlement here. Its story runs through the frictions of a shared frontier meetinghouse, a congregational split, and decades in the interdenominational Union Church before the Baptists raised their own sanctuary in 1884 and a larger one in 1912. One of its former pastors even helped launch a Baptist newspaper that anticipated a statewide religious publication.
Honey Grove Lodge No. 164, A. F. & A. M.
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Chartered in 1856 after a dispensation two years earlier, the Honey Grove Masonic Lodge met first in the attic of the old Smith Hotel and above the Walcott School before settling into its own quarters. Fire destroyed its N. 6th Street building in 1955, after which the lodge and the local newspaper rebuilt side by side at this site. For more than a century it has been a fixture of the town's civic and charitable life.
Honey Grove City Hall
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A decade after Honey Grove incorporated, Mayor J. P. Gilmer pressed the council in 1885 to build a proper city hall and jail, and the surviving minutes record every step—choosing a lot, arranging financing, and even rejecting the county's offer of aid when commissioners demanded a quarter interest. Built of stone from the local Floyd Quarry by contractor W. N. Allen, it opened in 1889 and remains Fannin County's only original civic building still standing. It is a rare survivor of small-town self-government in the Gilded Age.
Crockett Park
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Late in 1835, frontiersman and former congressman David Crockett crossed into Texas along the Red River, camping near this spot where he found wild bees and honey in hollow trees and, in letters home, dubbed the place a "honey grove." Within weeks he died at the Alamo, but his nickname stuck. Surveyor Samuel A. Erwin settled here in 1839, and with Benjamin S. Walcott platted the town of Honey Grove, which grew to some 4,000 people by 1890 after the railroad arrived.