Dripping Springs United Methodist Church
Dripping Springs, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Methodists in the Dripping Springs area first gathered for worship in the one-room log home of Dr. J. W. Pound in 1854. Two prominent 19th-century circuit preachers who served Dripping Springs were the Rev. Andrew J. Potter and the Rev. Orceneth A. Fisher. In 1880, the congregation built its first sanctuary on land donated by Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Phillips. In keeping with its history of community service, the congregation has often extended the use of its church home to newly organized churches of other denominations.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Methodism came to the Dripping Springs area in 1854, when worshippers first gathered in the one-room log home of Dr. J. W. Pound. Circuit-riding preachers like Andrew J. Potter and Orceneth A. Fisher carried the faith across the Texas Hill Country before the congregation built its first sanctuary in 1880 on donated land. True to frontier custom, the church repeatedly opened its doors to newly forming congregations of other denominations.
Why it matters
The congregation traces the arc of Hill Country settlement, when itinerant circuit preachers and shared meeting houses knit scattered pioneer families into lasting communities.
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Related people
- · J. W. Pound
- · Andrew J. Potter
- · Orceneth A. Fisher
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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
Dripping Springs, TX
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.
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.
Mt. Gainer Village
Hays County, TX
Mt. Gainer was once a thriving rural Texas settlement, complete with its own school, that slowly emptied as the twentieth century wore on. By 1998 only fragments remained — a school cistern and steps, a teacherage, native rock fences, and a scattering of buildings on private land — the quiet skeleton of a community that had faded away. It stands among the many small crossroads settlements that rose and vanished across the Texas Hill Country.