First Methodist Church of Plano
Plano, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
According to oral history sources, this congregation traces its history to 1846 or 1847, when a group of thirteen people met together in the home of Peters' colonists Joseph and Elizabeth Russell to organize a Methodist church. The group was assisted by James A. Smith, a local preacher living near Dallas. They continued to meet at the Russell home until the 1850s, when they moved to a schoolhouse ion upper Spring Creek northwest of the original Plano townsite. Plano was incorporated in 1873, one year after the Houston & Texas Central Railroad built a line through the area. The Methodists moved to the new town in 1874. The congregation became a full station of the Methodist Church in 1888, with the Rev. D.J. Martin as first full-time pastor. They bought land at present 16th and K Streets in 1894 and completed a new building in 1895. It served the members until 1968 when a larger facility was built at this site. Throughout its history, the First Methodist Church of Plano has served the community with a variety of worship, educational, and outreach programs. It maintains a strong record of support to both domestic and foreign missionary endeavors. (1992) supplemental plate: In 2002 the First United Methodist Church moved to a new location at 3160 East Spring Creek Parkway for more visibility and to accommodate congregational growth.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
By oral tradition this congregation began about 1846–47, when thirteen Peters Colony settlers gathered in the home of Joseph and Elizabeth Russell to organize a Methodist church on the North Texas frontier. The worshippers followed the growing community—first to a Spring Creek schoolhouse, then into the new railroad town of Plano after 1874—and became a full station in 1888. Generations of church buildings and outreach programs trace the town's growth from prairie settlement to modern suburb.
Why it matters
The congregation embodies the Peters Colony settlement of North Texas and the way frontier churches anchored communities that railroads later turned into thriving towns.
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Related people
- · Joseph Russell
- · Elizabeth Russell
- · James A. Smith
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bowman Cemetery
Plano, TX
This medallion marks Bowman Cemetery, established in 1868 and later designated a Historic Texas Cemetery. Founded just after the Civil War, it served the farming families settling the Blackland Prairie of what is now the Plano area of Collin County.
Muncey Massacre
Plano, TX
McBain Jameson and Jeremiah Muncey settled this vicinity in the early 1840s, when North Texas was still a dangerous frontier of scattered cabins. Late in 1844, hunters came upon the slain bodies of Jameson, the Muncey family, and a small child, along with signs of an Indian raid; a nearby settler's son named Rice was killed as well, and two Muncey boys vanished forever. Remembered as the last such raid in Collin County, the marker was moved to this site in 1998, about a mile from the actual home and graves.
Plano Mutual Cemetery
Plano, TX
Among the earliest graveyards in Collin County, this cemetery began in 1852 when Dr. Lillie was buried on land owned by his uncle William Forman, a Kentuckian who had bought 640 acres the year before. His death prompted settlers to organize a burial ground, and by the 1870s the Forman family plot merged with tracts owned by the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges. A Ladies Mutual Cemetery Association formed in the 1890s beautified and doubled the grounds before today's association took over in 1928.
First Baptist Church of Plano
Plano, TX
Established in 1852 as the Spring Creek Baptist Church on land owned by Jacob Routh, this congregation formally organized in 1853 and helped form the Elm Fork Baptist Association a year later. When the railroad reached Plano in 1872, the church took the town's name and built a new sanctuary here, becoming First Baptist around 1936 as the oldest Baptist congregation in Plano. Over the decades it helped plant several other area churches and sustained wide-ranging mission work.