First Methodist Church of Yoakum
Yoakum, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Rev. Thomas S. Armstrong, sent by the East Texas Conference of the Methodist Church to establish a church in Yoakum, led a small group of Methodists in organizing this congregation on October 28, 1889. The charter members included Mrs. M. M. Riggs, Mr. and Mrs. Jim Hulse, Mrs. Martha Goode, Mrs. S. L. Edwards, Mr. and Mrs. D. F. Sistrunk, Mrs. Sarah Weatherly, and Mr. T. M. Dodd, who served as the congregation's first steward. Early worship services were held in a variety of locations, including the Knights of Pythias Hall, an empty saloon building on Front Street, and buildings shared with the local Presbyterian and Baptist churches. The Methodist congregation built its first house of worship in 1893 on the corner of Rose Street and Price Avenue. It was replaced with a brick structure in 1917, and the congregation moved to a new church building at this site in 1973. Throughout its history the First United Methodist Church of Yoakum has been active in service to the community. The Women's Missionary Society (now known as United Methodist Women) was founded in 1893 and has continued its outreach activities for more than a century. 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Sent by the East Texas Conference in 1889, the Rev. Thomas S. Armstrong gathered a small band of Methodists to organize this Yoakum congregation, worshiping at first in a Knights of Pythias hall, an empty saloon, and borrowed sanctuaries. The church built its first home in 1893 and replaced it with a brick structure in 1917 before moving to its present site in 1973. Its Women's Missionary Society, founded in 1893, has carried on outreach for well over a century.
Why it matters
The congregation's makeshift early meeting places and its long-lived women's mission society capture how faith and female organizing knit together a young Texas railroad town.
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Related people
- · Rev. Thomas S. Armstrong
- · T. M. Dodd
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church of Yoakum
Yoakum, TX
This congregation was organized on the last day of 1893 with 22 charter members and the help of a traveling Presbyterian evangelist. It bought this site in 1895, built a frame sanctuary in 1898, and formed a Ladies Aid Society and Sunday School before it. Membership peaked at 212 in 1917, and in 1926 the original building was reoriented, brick-veneered, and rebuilt into a two-story church.
Katolika Jednota Zen Texaskych (K.J.Z.T.)_Catholic Women's Union of Texas
Yoakum, TX
Czech immigrant women worked farms as equals to men, yet insurers refused them life policies, leaving families exposed to the costs of illness and death. In 1894, Anna Jakubik and Marie Yurek of Yoakum founded the Katolika Jednota Zen Texaskych (Catholic Women's Union of Texas), a mutual-aid society that grew to 60 chapters and over 8,000 members by 1917. Uniquely staffed entirely by women, it evolved into a financial institution offering insurance, loans, and scholarships—and even published a Czech-language newspaper with hard news, rare for a women's publication of the era.
First Baptist Church of Yoakum
Yoakum, TX
Yoakum sprang up in 1887 when the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad pushed through, and the First Baptist Church organized on April 7, 1889 — a month before the town itself incorporated. Seven charter members began under the Rev. H. M. Rowland, worshipping first in a one-room frame building before a brick sanctuary with six stained-glass windows rose in 1912. The congregation has long carried on local and foreign mission work.
Site of Beasley School
Shiner vicinity, TX
Schooling in this corner of Lavaca County began as early as 1885 at the Broom Weed school, where Mary Singer taught every child in a single room. When that frame building proved inadequate, the Beasleys hosted classes in their home and donated an acre for a new schoolhouse that took their name. A two-room building followed in 1910, along with a teacherage, well, and windmill—though in these farming years the school term ran only five months, timed around planting and harvest, before finally closing in 1951.