First Methodist Church of Livingston
Livingston, Polk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Rev. Blackwell Dunnam organized this congregation in 1848, two years after Livingston became Polk County Seat. Early worship services were held in members' homes. A sanctuary was erected on the corner of Church and East streets in 1859 during the pastorate of the Rev. D. M. Stovall. It was used by several congregations and also served as a community schoolhouse. The Methodists built a new structure at 302 W. Church Street in 1911; it was replaced in 1948-49. Upholding the traditions of its founders, the church continues to serve the community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Rev. Blackwell Dunnam gathered this Methodist congregation in 1848, just two years after Livingston became the seat of Polk County. Early services met in members' homes until a sanctuary rose at Church and East streets in 1859, a building that doubled as a community schoolhouse and welcomed several congregations. New structures followed in 1911 and again in 1948-49 as the church carried its founders' work forward.
Why it matters
The congregation traces the intertwined growth of faith, schooling, and civic life in a frontier Texas county seat.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Blackwell Dunnam
- · D. M. Stovall
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dunbar High School
Livingston, TX
Formal education for Livingston's African American children began in a West Street building in the late 1800s, in a segregated system so under-resourced that a former white schoolhouse was once rolled across town on logs by mule teams to serve Black students. In 1936 the community opened Dunbar High School—named for poet Paul Laurence Dunbar—the largest African American school in Polk County, with twelve grades and vocational training. Its Leopards won state football titles in 1953, 1954, and 1958, until the Freedom of Choice integration program led to Dunbar's closing in 1968; residents later saved the campus for continued public use.
Trinity Lodge No. 14, A.F. & A.M.
Livingston, TX
Organized in 1840 in the vanished river town of Swartwout when this was still Liberty County, Trinity Lodge did far more than hold Masonic rites—its members founded and bankrolled the area's first schools, furnishing the lower floor of the lodge for classes and paying teachers' salaries and tuition. When the lodge moved to Livingston in 1846, it again housed the town's first school, a role it filled until 1908.
Education in Livingston
Livingston, TX
Education took root in Livingston from the town's 1840s founding, when Moses Choate's land donation included a site for a school and the Masonic lodge financed a free academy in 1849. A graded school followed in 1888, growing into Livingston High School, whose first class graduated in 1908. The story also traces the town's separate Black schools—including Dunbar High—through the Freedom of Choice program that began integration in 1965 and full unification by 1968.
Central Baptist Church
Livingston, TX
The Baptists of Livingston founded Ariel Baptist Church around 1852, and the congregation has carried several names since — Livingston Baptist after the Civil War, and Central Baptist from 1917. In 1887 two women, Susan Hunt and Patience Watts, helped buy the church its first lot, and its first permanent building rose the next year. Across the decades the church built ministries in missions, education, publishing, and eventually radio and television.