First Christian Church of Longview
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This church was organized in 1875 by 12 charter members. The congregation met in a schoolhouse until a frame sanctuary was built later that year on land deeded to the church by the Texas & Pacific Railroad Company. James P. Holloway, a prominent area landowner, served as first pastor. A new church building, erected in 1906, was replaced with a brick sanctuary at this site in 1936. The church continues a long tradition of supporting numerous ministries by offering various worship and outreach programs and activities to the community. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Twelve charter members organized this congregation in 1875, meeting first in a schoolhouse before building a frame sanctuary on land deeded by the Texas & Pacific Railroad — a reminder of how the railroads seeded churches and civic life in East Texas towns. James P. Holloway, a prominent local landowner, served as the first pastor. Successive buildings in 1906 and 1936 mark a congregation that grew steadily alongside Longview itself.
Why it matters
Its founding on railroad-granted land captures the tight link between rail expansion and community formation that defined the growth of post–Civil War Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
O. H. Methvin
Longview, TX
Georgia-born O. H. Methvin came to Texas around 1848 with his wife Margaret and his father, settling on land in what was then Upshur County. In 1870 he gave 100 acres to the Southern Pacific Railroad, an act that founded the city of Longview; three years later it became the seat of the newly organized Gregg County. Methvin's land gift turned a railroad stop into a county town.
Greenwood Cemetery
Longview, TX
Laid out in 1877 just beyond Longview's limits and beside a new railroad subdivision, this burial ground became the resting place for the town's founding generation. Its rows hold a War of 1812 veteran, dozens of Confederate soldiers, victims of the 1894 Dalton Gang bank robbery, and a family lost in the 1900 Galveston hurricane, alongside civic fathers like O.H. Methvin, called the father of Longview. Renamed Greenwood in 1905 when the city grew to enclose it, the cemetery reads almost as a directory of the region's past.
Early Teague Home
Longview, TX
This house is one of the few surviving structures of Earpville, the early settlement that grew into Longview, standing along William T. Brooks's stagecoach line running from Monroe, Louisiana, to Tyler, Texas. Built before 1882 and bought that year by Alabama natives Latimus and Mary Teague, it became a schoolhouse in 1890 when their daughters Molly and Sarah taught classes and music here until the school moved in 1905.
Site of Earpville
Longview, TX
Earpville was settled in the late 1840s by James Earp and his relatives from Alabama, growing along a stagecoach line into a hub with a post office, stage stop, Methodist church, and stores that served the region's farmers. When part of Earp's homesite was sold to the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870, the new town of Longview rose beside the tracks and Earpville faded away. Its disappearance is a classic case of the railroad choosing a town's fate.