First Methodist Church of Farmersville
Farmersville, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation traces its beginning to organized Methodist classes conducted in 1856 by the Rev. J.W. Chalk in a local schoolhouse west of the pioneer town of Farmersville. A community-wide all-night revival held in Farmersville's lone church structure in 1870 aroused many in attendance to join the Methodist congregation. Arbor meetings were held for 15 years on property near Brushy Creek owned by Sam R. and Mary Hamilton beginning in 1873. The congregation built its first church structure at this location in 1875. The one-room building was razed and replaced in 1902 with a grand ornate church building designed by James Edward Flanders. The magnificent structure was destroyed by fire at great cost to the congregation in 1924. Church services were held in the Cornes Theater before a new Greek revival style church structure was completed in 1926. The congregation has a history of service to the local community. Space in the church building was used for a community blood drive and as an air raid shelter during World War II. Renamed the First United Methodist Church in 1968, the congregation has sponsored youth programs in New Mexico and participated in missionary work in South America. (1992)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Farmersville congregation grew from Methodist classes led in 1856 by the Rev. J. W. Chalk in a country schoolhouse, gathering strength through revivals and years of arbor meetings before building its first church in 1875. A grand ornate sanctuary designed by architect James Edward Flanders replaced it in 1902, only to burn in 1924; the present Greek Revival church followed in 1926. Over the decades the congregation served its town in wide-ranging ways, even lending its building as a blood-drive site and air-raid shelter during World War II.
Why it matters
The church's century-long succession of buildings and community roles traces the maturing of a Texas farm town from frontier revival meetings to an established civic institution.
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Related people
- · Rev. J. W. Chalk
- · James Edward Flanders
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Farmersville
Farmersville, TX
On a spring day in 1865, as the Civil War drew to its close, fifteen charter members gathered under a brush arbor at this Collin County site to organize Farmersville's First Baptist Church, calling the Rev. John C. Averitt as their first pastor. The congregation worshiped in homes and the Masonic Hall before building a simple frame church in 1877, its steeple bell announcing news to the town. A growing membership replaced it in 1900 with the present brick sanctuary, a picturesque blend of architectural styles crowned with pressed-metal roofing and flanking towers.
Farmersville I.O.O.F. Cemetery
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Farmersville grew from the 1850s out of the earlier pioneer settlement of Sugar Hill, taking its name from the farming background of its settlers. In 1875 the Independent Order of Odd Fellows chartered Pride Lodge No. 208 here, and in 1899 the fraternal order set aside this hilltop as a cemetery. Enlarged to 25 landscaped acres, it holds a 1902 mausoleum and carved statuary, and still chronicles the town's history through the lives of those buried here.
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Farmersville began in 1849 as a settlement on the Jefferson-McKinney Road, named by pioneers for their chief occupation. It gathered churches, a school, and a public square, incorporated in 1873, and grew into a farm-trade center famous in the 1930s as the "Onion Capital of North Texas," shipping over a thousand carloads a year. Among its residents was Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II, who lived here before entering the Army.
Huson Cemetery
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Allen Daniel brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1847 and bought 480 acres here in 1851, only to die and be buried on his own land the following year. His daughter Tennessee, who married D. E. Huson, later gave the ground around her father's grave to the community as a public cemetery. Among the hundreds of marked and unmarked graves lie town founders, pioneer families, and many former slaves and their descendants, including the Nelson, Sneed, Glass, and Bryson families.