Corinth Presbyterian Church
Parker, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Pioneer settler C.A. McMillen established the Corinth Society Church of August 2, 1846. Thought to be the oldest continuing church congregation in Collin County, its charter members included the Murphy, Wilkins, and Maxwell families. The church served as both a Presbyterian and a community church. The congregation first met east of Murphy in the Maxwell schoolhouse. After the Civil War, the church members met in the McMillen home, and later at the Wilkins schoolhouse. Several years later, the congregation constructed its first church building at the corner of Grey Lane and Gregory Lane. In the early 1920s Mr. and Mrs. C.C. Gregory donated more than two acres on Parker Road to the church. A new sanctuary was completed in 1923, and the congregation commemorated its dedication with day-long events at the new structure. The church building was refurbished in the 1980s, and a bell steeple was added. The church continues to serve the needs of its members, participates in community activities, and supports outreach programs in the area. Corinth Presbyterian Church has been an integral part of the Parker area for more than 150 years. (1996)***
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Pioneer settler C.A. McMillen founded the Corinth Society Church on August 2, 1846, and it is thought to be the oldest continuing congregation in Collin County. Charter families like the Murphys, Wilkinses, and Maxwells first met in a schoolhouse, then in homes after the Civil War, before building successive churches and finally a 1923 sanctuary on land donated on Parker Road. Refurbished in the 1980s, the church has served the Parker area for more than 150 years.
Why it matters
As the county's oldest continuing congregation, Corinth Presbyterian shows how frontier churches doubled as the social and civic anchors that held early Texas communities together.
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Related people
- · C.A. McMillen
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
McMillen Cemetery
Murphy, TX
This medallion marks McMillen Cemetery, established in 1901 and later designated a Historic Texas Cemetery. Burial grounds like it anchored the small farming communities that dotted Collin County's Blackland Prairie in the early twentieth century, often outlasting the settlements they once served.
Murphy Family Cemetery
Murphy, TX
In 1872, on the death of his sister Susan Emberton, William A. Murphy set aside a corner of his North Texas land as a private family burial ground, laying it out with sons' families to the north and daughters' to the south. As the Murphys drifted west in the late 1800s, the plot opened to the wider Murphy community, taking its last burial in 1988. Today it rests among cedars first planted by William and Dorothy Murphy's daughters.
Murphy Community
Murphy, TX
Settled in the early 1840s by pioneers from a dozen states drawn to the fertile Blackland Prairie, this community farmed and ranched the tall-grass, black-soil country for well over a century. It took the name Murphy in 1888 when William Murphy granted right-of-way to the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad, though the city itself wasn't formally established until 1958. Founding Maxwell, McMillen, and Murphy families built the stores and schools of an agrarian town that faded by 1970—only to revive in the 1980s as a Dallas suburb.
First Methodist Church of Plano
Plano, TX
By oral tradition this congregation began about 1846–47, when thirteen Peters Colony settlers gathered in the home of Joseph and Elizabeth Russell to organize a Methodist church on the North Texas frontier. The worshippers followed the growing community—first to a Spring Creek schoolhouse, then into the new railroad town of Plano after 1874—and became a full station in 1888. Generations of church buildings and outreach programs trace the town's growth from prairie settlement to modern suburb.