First Christian Church of McGregor (Disciples of Christ)
McGregor, McLennan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Four families formed a Christian church in nearby Comanche Springs in the 1870s, with the Rev. W. L. Harrison as first pastor. In 1883 members moved to the new railroad town of McGregor and built a church on Main Street in 1884. There were 80 members in 1897 when the Christian church split over basic principles; one group retained the property and became the First Christian Church of McGregor in 1899. A new structure was erected on the Main Street site in 1907. The church employed its first female pastor in 1990. The church remains active in missionary work, community service, and worship, rooted in the traditions of the founders. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Four families gathered in the 1870s at Comanche Springs to form a Christian congregation, then followed opportunity to the new railroad town of McGregor in 1883, building a church on Main Street the next year. When the wider Christian movement split over doctrine near the turn of the century, one group kept the property and became the First Christian Church of McGregor. A larger sanctuary rose on the same site in 1907, and the congregation remains active more than a century later.
Why it matters
Congregations that moved with the railroads show how faith communities helped seed and sustain the new towns that the rails scattered across Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after the Civil War, central Texas was being remade by two forces at once: the slow work of Reconstruction and the fast, restless push of the railroads. Small farming settlements had gathered around reliable water and good land, but their fortunes were about to be redrawn by wherever the rail lines chose to run. A place with a spring might sustain a handful of families; a place with a depot could become a town.
That is the backdrop for this congregation's early life. In the 1870s, a small cluster of families in the McLennan County countryside did what settlers across the frontier were doing everywhere — they organized a church long before they had a permanent town around it. Worship came first; the community grew up around it.
This was also the era of the great American religious movement often called the Restoration or Stone-Campbell movement, from which the Disciples of Christ and related "Christian" churches grew. It spread widely across the frontier South and Midwest, prizing simple New Testament faith and local, self-governing congregations — exactly the kind of church a few determined families could plant on their own.
People & events
It began with four families gathering near a country spring, and with a preacher, the Rev. W. L. Harrison, serving as their first pastor. In those first years the congregation had no grand building and no town to anchor it — just people, conviction, and a place to meet.
When the railroad brought a brand-new town into being nearby, the members made a decision that would define their future: they moved. In the early 1880s they relocated to that young railroad town and, soon after, built themselves a church on its Main Street — planting their faith right in the heart of the new community rather than waiting to see whether the town would last.
Growth brought its own trials. By the end of the century the congregation numbered in the dozens when a split over matters of principle divided them — an echo of the wider doctrinal debates then reshaping the whole Christian movement. One group kept the property and carried the church forward under its enduring name. Years later a larger sanctuary rose on that same Main Street site, and later still the congregation called its first woman to the pulpit — small chapters in a long, continuous story of a community adapting while holding on to what it valued.
Its place in the American story
The story of this church is really the story of how the American West was settled — not just by land rushes and cattle drives, but by the railroads that decided which towns would live and which would fade. When a congregation packed up and followed the tracks to a new depot town, it was making the same bet thousands of communities made: that the future lay wherever the rails ran.
Churches like this one did more than hold Sunday services. On a raw frontier, a congregation was often among the first institutions a town had — a place that offered continuity, charity, schooling, and a sense of belonging before there was much else. By moving into the new town so early, these families helped give it the social roots a settlement needs to become a real community.
The congregation's late-century division also mirrors something larger in American religious life. The Restoration movement that produced the Disciples of Christ eventually parted into distinct fellowships over questions of practice and principle. A single small-town church living through that split is a window onto a national story — how faith communities argued, divided, and endured across the whole country.
If you visit
Come to Main Street and let the setting tell the story. The congregation deliberately planted itself on the town's central street, so the church stands where the community's life has always run — a reminder that in a railroad town, the church and the depot grew up together.
Look at the building as a layered record of endurance. An early wood-frame church once stood here; a larger sanctuary later rose on the very same site. Standing in one spot, you're looking at more than a century of a community choosing, again and again, to stay put and keep going.
This is a fine stop for a slow drive through central Texas, where historic markers cluster in the small towns the railroads made. Pair it with a walk along Main Street to feel the shape of a classic Texas rail town, and let this quiet congregation stand in for the countless families whose faith helped turn a spot on the map into a home.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · W. L. Harrison
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of McGregor
McGregor, TX
The First Baptist Church of McGregor traces its lineage back to the 1858 Onion Creek Baptist Church and was formally established in 1884 by ministers and members of the Comanche Springs congregation. Building its first church here in 1886, it grew steadily — Sunday school reached 280 pupils by 1911, and the Ladies Aid Society's fundraising made possible a new sanctuary in 1914. By 1960 the congregation numbered well over 600 members.
Deyerle-Fall House
McGregor, TX
William Deyerle, a banker, rancher, and miller who came to Central Texas from Virginia, hired master stonemason Henry Wissman to build this limestone home, completed in 1892. Wissman quarried and hauled every stone himself, laying them to his own design beneath a hipped roof trimmed with arched windows and a bracketed cornice. After a family tragedy claimed Deyerle's widow and her second husband in 1926, the house passed to her sister and stayed in the Fall family until 1975.
First Methodist Church of Oglesby
Oglesby, TX
This congregation was organized in 1891 as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and counted 56 members in its first year under its first pastor. An early building was destroyed by a tornado in 1893, and its replacement gave way in 1912 to this late Victorian Queen Anne church with a central gable and twin bell towers. For generations the congregation funded missionaries abroad through an annual harvest festival.
First Baptist Church of Oglesby
Oglesby, TX
The First Baptist Church of Oglesby grew out of an 1893 revival and was formally organized in September 1896, calling J.M.B. Gresham as its first pastor. For its early decades the congregation gathered only once or twice a month, weathering the loss of its first building to fire in 1913 before rebuilding the following year. Missionary outreach and community involvement have long marked its life.