Elm Grove Union Church
Mabank, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This community church traces its history to the early 1870s. A log structure used as a church, school, and community gathering place was built on land owned by early settler Anthony Gray Hyde in 1875. Called Hyde Schoolhouse, it served the community until 1882, when it was replaced by a larger wooden building. One year later the school was moved to a new location near this site and renamed Elm Grove. The school became a public free school in 1885 to serve residents in the Roddy community (named for pioneer Steven Goven Roddy). After this property was given to the community church in 1900 by T. H. and Minerva Hardin, a new sanctuary was built. At that time the school and church ceased sharing the same building. A new church building erected in 1922 was replaced after it was destroyed by fire in 1941. Since its beginning, this has been a multi-denominational Union Church. The three congregations which share use of the building and operate a cooperative Sunday School program include Elm Grove Presbyterian, organized in 1872; Elm Grove Methodist, organized in 1893; and Elm Grove Missionary Baptist, organized in 1897. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This East Texas congregation traces its roots to a log building raised in 1875 on settler Anthony Gray Hyde's land, where church, school, and community all gathered under one roof. After the school moved and took the name Elm Grove, the church settled here and has since been shared by Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist congregations who worship separately but run a joint Sunday school.
Why it matters
A multi-denominational union church is a distinctive frontier solution to scarce resources, showing how small rural communities pooled their faith and effort to sustain worship and schooling.
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Related people
- · Anthony Gray Hyde
- · Steven Goven Roddy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mono School
Mabank, TX
Formed in 1895 when the tiny Elm Grove and Harper districts merged, Mono School—its name meaning "One"—served the farming families of Roddy and Elm Grove in Van Zandt County. At its height it employed four teachers and taught children through the tenth grade. When wartime factory jobs pulled families toward the cities after World War II, enrollment dwindled and the school closed its doors in 1950.
White Hall School
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Built in 1888 on land donated by the Albert T. Rice family, the first White Hall School was a single-room building first called Caney Creek School, renamed in 1910. Growth brought a four-room building in 1928 and a faculty of four, until the school was consolidated into the Mabank district around 1949. The building lived on afterward as a church and community center, and many former students' descendants remain in the area.
First Baptist Church of Mabank
Mabank, TX
Organized in the closing years of the 1890s by nine charter members under a traveling Baptist missionary, this fellowship began as Lawndale Baptist Church a mile to the northeast. When the railroad reached the area in 1900, the congregation moved to the new townsite and became Mabank Baptist. Its early meetinghouse did triple duty—home to Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian worshippers and to the public school—before growing into successive larger sanctuaries.
Roddy Lodge No. 734, A.F. & A.M.
Mabank, TX
Chartered on May 14, 1892, this Masonic lodge began in the community of Roddy, founded by Stephen G. Roddy in 1884, meeting above a general store. When the railroad town of Mabank boomed after 1900, the lodge followed, meeting in a succession of halls — one lost to a 1914 fire — before building its own quarters in 1958. The lodge has long raised money for local schools and awards scholarships to graduating seniors.