First Methodist Church of Winters
Winters, Runnels County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of the first church building at Winters and oldest Methodist church site in Runnels County. The congregation was organized in 1891, under George D. Wilson, pastor. For eight years, they shared the local school building with other denominations. The first church building -- a frame structure -- was erected on this site in 1899 under the pastorate of John Wesley Bowden, pioneer circuit rider. In 1911 a large tabernacle, also frame, was built near the first church, which was moved to Hatchell in 1912. The tabernacle was unique in that its sides could be opened to receive cool breezes in the summer. It was used for services until the third church was erected, in 1913. Subsequently, it housed summer revivals and large community gatherings. It also substituted as a sanctuary at necessary times. The third church -- a steepled, red brick building -- served for 11 years, until the present brick church was erected, at a cost of $40,000. In 1925 parishioners literally placed $8,500.50 in cash on a barrelhead one Sunday to retire the church building debt and, incidentally, to act out the familiar saying. A church building has stood on this corner -- and worship has been held here -- each Sunday since 1899.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the young ranching town of Winters, on the West Texas rolling plains, a Methodist congregation organized in 1891 and worshipped for eight years in the shared local schoolhouse before raising its first frame church on this corner in 1899 under pioneer circuit rider John Wesley Bowden. A distinctive open-sided tabernacle followed in 1911, catching summer breezes and hosting revivals and town gatherings for decades. The marker's most memorable episode came in 1925, when parishioners literally laid $8,500.50 in cash on a barrelhead one Sunday to retire the new brick church's debt.
Why it matters
The steady succession of buildings on one corner traces how faith communities anchored and sustained the frontier towns that settled West Texas.
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Related people
- · George D. Wilson
- · John Wesley Bowden
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Winters
Winters, TX
Winters began in the 1880s when the Curry and Bell families staked claims on the west-central Texas prairie, and it took its name in 1889 by a vote in a new schoolhouse built on land from agent J.N. Winters. Cattle, feed, and cotton gave it an early economy, and the arrival of a rail line from Abilene in 1909 — with blacktop roads and the automobile close behind — brought a wave of prosperity. Oil strikes in 1949 and local milling and manufacturing kept the town growing, though it never followed a planned grid.
Winters Lodge No. 743, A.F. & A.M.
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Winters Lodge No. 743 began in the upper room of a schoolhouse a full decade before Winters was even a town, and took its charter in December 1892. Fraternal lodges like this one were often the first organized institutions on the West Texas plains, offering structure, mutual aid, and fellowship to scattered settlers. When fire struck in 1910, the lodge simply rebuilt and carried on in a new hall.
Robert Cooke, M.D.
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Robert Cooke, a Texas-born son of pioneers, earned his medical degree in Kentucky in 1886 and came to the Winters area in 1889, becoming the fledgling town's first physician. He doubled as a man of the church — a Baptist deacon and later preacher — beloved as both healer of bodies and shepherd of souls.
Winters Brass Band
Winters, TX
Organized by Charles Grant in 1901, just a few years after Winters was incorporated, the town's brass band quickly became the center of local social life — playing box suppers, old-settler reunions, and political rallies, and heralding the arrival of Winters' first railroad in 1909. Members rode to neighboring towns in a bandwagon drawn by four white horses and gave Sunday concerts in the park, favoring rousing numbers like "Stars and Stripes Forever." Once the largest brass band west of Fort Worth, it later lent its instruments to help start the school band. At its peak Texas had some 200 such bands, part of a musical culture reaching back to the state's first colony.