HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Driftwood Church

Driftwood, Hays County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Early Methodist church services in Driftwood were held in the Reaves School (1 mi. N) by the Rev. John Alexander Garison (1849-1933), who served other small Hays County communities as well. The congregation began meeting here in 1884 after this small frame sanctuary was completed. When the local Baptist church building was destroyed in 1911 the Methodists shared this structure with the Baptists. Both congregations have continued to hold services here and provide a Union Sunday School. Descendants of pioneer church members still worship at the Driftwood church. (1983)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Methodist services in Driftwood began in the nearby Reaves School under the Rev. John Alexander Garison, a circuit-riding minister to several small Hays County communities. The congregation moved into this frame sanctuary in 1884, and when fire destroyed the local Baptist church in 1911 the two congregations began sharing the building and a Union Sunday School. Descendants of the pioneer members worship here still.

Why it matters

The shared sanctuary is a touching example of how small frontier communities pooled scarce resources and set aside denominational lines to keep faith and fellowship alive.

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Related people

  • · John Alexander Garison

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Joseph B. Rogers House

Driftwood, TX

Joseph B. Rogers (1833–1912), son of settlers who reached Texas in 1831, rode with Terry's Texas Rangers during the Civil War before buying this Hays County land in 1869. In the early 1870s he hired local workmen to raise this native limestone house, built in the pioneer fashion with a central hall and a chimney at each end. His descendants preserved the home, replacing its wooden porch with concrete in 1916.

Phillips Cemetery

Dripping Springs, TX

In 1880 settlers John and Nancy Phillips deeded this land to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, where a small sanctuary was dedicated that March. Following frontier custom, the community buried its dead beside the church, and the graves came to include sixteen Civil War veterans and many of Dripping Springs' earliest families. When a new church rose on the San Marcos road in 1901, the old site endured as a cemetery, tended by families and, by 1962, a formal association.

The Marshall-Chapman Home

Dripping Springs, TX

Burrell J. Marshall built this Hays County home in 1871, adding native limestone rooms to an existing frame house, and briefly ran the post office here during his term as postmaster. After his death in 1872, his widow Martha married William Thomas Chapman, himself a postmaster and a trustee of the Dripping Springs Academy, and the two families held the house until 1942.

W. T. Chapman

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Georgia-born William Thomas Chapman came to the Dripping Springs area after being wounded and captured in the Civil War, and by the 1870s had become the community's postmaster, stagecoach operator, and driving civic force. He gave land for a church, a Baptist congregation, and the Dripping Springs Academy, and in 1881 platted the town itself from his wife Martha's inherited acreage, naming the main street for their son. A merchant and Confederate-veterans organizer, he helped found Camp Ben McCulloch.