First Christian Church of Granbury
Granbury, Hood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This church was organized in the 1870's with the aid of Addison and Randolph Clark. In 1873 they helped their father Joseph A. Clark establish the Add-Ran Male and Female College at Thorp Spring (3.8 miles northwest), which later became Texas Christian University of Fort Worth. The Clark Brothers shared responsibilities as the first pastors. In 1889 the men of the fellowship erected a frame sanctuary on property purchased from D.C. Cogdell. This congregation has grown rapidly since the completion of Lake Granbury in 1969.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This congregation took shape in the 1870s with the help of Addison and Randolph Clark, whose father Joseph A. Clark founded the Add-Ran Male and Female College nearby at Thorp Spring in 1873. That school would grow into Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. The Clark brothers served as the church's first pastors, and the men of the fellowship raised a frame sanctuary in 1889.
Why it matters
The church links a small Hood County community to the founding of one of Texas's major universities, showing how frontier faith and education grew hand in hand.
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Related people
- · Addison Clark
- · Randolph Clark
- · Joseph A. Clark
Related events
- · Founding of Texas Christian University
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Born in 1894 into a struggling Hood County family, Nellie Gray Robertson entered the University of Texas in 1912 and passed the state bar in 1918, breaking into a profession then closed to women. She returned home to win election as Hood County attorney—the first woman to hold that office in Texas—and served multiple terms, and in 1925 was named to sit on an all-woman Texas Supreme Court, though she narrowly lacked the required years of practice to serve. She later wrote law books in New York and led title companies in Houston and Beaumont.
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Known as "the cemetery lot" before the town of Granbury even existed, this hillside held graves predating the city's 1866 founding, the earliest from 1853. Church leaders briefly made it the site of a high school that grew into Granbury College before the land returned to full use as a burial ground in 1915. Among those at rest are the city's namesake, Confederate Brigadier General Hiram B. Granbury, and veterans of every American conflict from the War of 1812 through Vietnam.
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