HistoricSiteMarkers
Early Republic

Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Daingerfield, Morris County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Congregation traces its history to 1849, when area Presbyterians formally organized and began holding worship services in private homes. From 1852 to 1880, services were held in the Chapel Hill College building at this site. The congregation has since met here in its own church structure, known for a period as the "Union Church" because Baptists also worshiped there. A declining population led the Presbyterians to deactivate in 1925, but in 1950 they reorganized and resumed worshiping at their historic locale.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

This congregation reaches back to 1849, when Presbyterian settlers in the young state of Texas first gathered for worship in one another's parlors. For decades beginning in 1852 they met in the Chapel Hill College building on this spot, and for a time the sanctuary was shared with Baptists and known as the "Union Church." A shrinking population forced the church to close its doors in 1925, but the faithful reorganized in 1950 and returned to their historic ground.

Why it matters

The church traces the arc of countless small-town American congregations—frontier founding, shared pioneer worship, decline, and revival—anchoring a community's identity across a century of change.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Themes & tags

EducationChurch

Nearby & related markers

Site of Chapel Hill College

Daingerfield, TX

Chapel Hill College was chartered in 1850 and opened in 1852 in a brick building on land donated by Republic of Texas surveyor Allen Urquhart. Founded by the Marshall Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church to train ministers, it also taught medicine, law, and the liberal arts. A shortage of students and funds forced it to close in 1869.

County Line Baptist Church and Cemetery

Daingerfield, TX

County Line Baptist Church traces its records to 1859 and likely stood even earlier, its cemetery already in use by 1863 when three-year-old John C. Leftwich became the first marked burial. For a decade around the turn of the century the log church doubled as the County Line Community School before a new building rose in 1901. When age and storm damage forced the congregation to relocate in 1943, the once scraped-earth cemetery was left to grow over in grass, and a cemetery association formed to tend it in 1976.

Site of Valley View School, Site of

Daingerfield vicinity, TX

When Morris County drew up its school districts in 1893, this corner fell within the Valley View District, and the Fomby family donated 3.5 acres for a schoolhouse moved here from nearby Snow Hill. It grew from one room to two as enrollment rose, teaching local children through the eighth grade before they went on to Daingerfield High School. The school closed in 1935 and its district was folded into Daingerfield in 1952.

Center Point School

Pittsburg, TX

Center Point grew up as a Freedmen's community in the years just after emancipation, settled by the Willie Johnson family and other formerly enslaved people around 1865–70. In 1899 G. W. Goulsby opened its first school in a single room, and over the following decades it expanded—aided by the Julius Rosenwald Fund—into a full campus with a library, dormitories, cafeteria, and gymnasium, where students ran a working farm and cannery. The school served the community until it closed in 1952.