First Presbyterian Church of Alice
Alice, Jim Wells County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On November 6, 1898, twenty-one ears after the founding of Alice, fifteen people met with an evangelist, the Rev. A.H.P. McCurdy of the Western Presbytery of Texas, to organize a mission church. The fifteen charter members were Mrs. Anna Adams, Mr. M.D. (Frank) Ayers, Mrs. Alice Mary Ayers, Miss Sadie P. Ayers, Mrs. Lillie Beckham, Mr. Walter Caldwell, Miss Lillie Clark, Miss Annie Doughty, Mrs. Mollie Gibson, Mr. W.A. Hinnant, Mrs. M.J. Jones, Miss Carrie E. Mosser, Mrs. Annie Schoebaum, Mrs. Sarah R. Staples, and Miss Ann Staples. The Rev. Mr. McCurdy served as first pastor. In January 1903, the Presbyterian Ladies' Aid Society was formed with fourteen member. By December 1903 the society had raised enough money, through such enterprises as ice cream socials, oyster fries, and bazaars, to purchase land on this site for a price of $137.75. In July 1908 a white frame church building was completed, and in 1912 a two-story manse was erected next door. The mission became a self-supporting church in 1937. A new brick building was erected in 1938, and an educational building was added in 1948. The structure was remodeled in 1979 to fit the congregation's growing needs. In 1998, the First Presbyterian Church of Alice had 181 members. Continuing in the traditions of its founders, the congregation remains involved in community service and outreach, mission programs, and worship activities. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1898, twenty-one years after Alice was founded, fifteen charter members met with a traveling evangelist to organize a Presbyterian mission church in this South Texas town. Its Ladies' Aid Society, formed in 1903, raised the money for the church's land through ice cream socials, oyster fries, and bazaars. The mission became a self-supporting church in 1937 and has served the community ever since.
Why it matters
The women whose socials and bazaars bought the church's land show how female fundraising quietly built much of frontier Texas's religious life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the time this congregation was organized on November 6, 1898, the town of Alice had existed for twenty-one years — a South Texas railroad and ranching community that had grown up in the decades after the Civil War, in the era historians call the Gilded Age. This was a corner of the country still being knit together by rail lines and cattle, where towns matured from raw crossroads into places with schools, stores, and the desire for churches.
Organized religion in a town like this often arrived through traveling evangelists who rode a circuit across wide territory, gathering the faithful wherever a few could be found. A mission church was exactly that: a beginning, dependent on outside support and local determination until it could stand on its own.
The founding gathering of fifteen people, meeting with a visiting evangelist, is the marker’s snapshot of that moment — a community deciding it was ready for a church of its own.
People & events
On that November day in 1898, fifteen charter members met with the Reverend A.H.P. McCurdy of the Western Presbytery of Texas to organize a mission church, and he became its first pastor. What stands out in the roster is who filled it: of the fifteen founders, twelve were women and only three were men. From its first hour, this was a church largely built by women.
That character became unmistakable a few years on. In January 1903 the Presbyterian Ladies’ Aid Society formed with fourteen members, and it promptly went to work on the congregation’s most pressing need — a place of its own. By December 1903 the society had raised the money to buy the land on this site, at a price of $137.75, through a run of thoroughly community affairs: ice cream socials, oyster fries, and bazaars.
The buildings followed as the church grew. A white frame church was completed in July 1908, and a two-story manse rose next door in 1912. The mission finally became a self-supporting church in 1937, traded its frame building for brick in 1938, and added an educational building in 1948, later remodeling in 1979 to meet the needs of a still-growing congregation that numbered 181 members by 1998.
Its place in the American story
The enduring lesson of this marker is written in a single price: $137.75, raised a dime and a dollar at a time over socials and bazaars, and paid by a women’s society. Across America, an enormous share of the country’s religious life was quietly financed exactly this way — through the organized, sustained fundraising of women whose names rarely made it into the histories, even as their work bought the land and raised the walls.
That pattern matters because it complicates the usual picture of how churches were built. The pulpit may have belonged to the visiting reverend, but the deed to the ground was earned by the Ladies’ Aid Society. In a mission church where women made up the clear majority of the founders, the institution was, in a very real sense, theirs from the start.
Multiply this one South Texas congregation by the thousands of similar societies at work in towns all over the country, and you begin to see a national story hiding in plain sight — the vast, patient labor of women that built much of the civic and religious fabric of the American West.
If you visit
Stand at this site and let the modest, exact sum do its work: $137.75 for the land beneath a town’s church, earned over ice cream socials, oyster fries, and bazaars. It is one of those small, precise figures that brings a whole vanished world of effort suddenly close.
Read the charter roster in your mind and notice the balance of it — twelve women, three men — then look at the ground and remember it was the women’s society that bought it. This is a place to think about the people who did the unglamorous work of raising money, meal by meal and bazaar by bazaar, until a mission could stand on its own.
Alice sits out in the South Texas country between the coast and the border, an easy addition to a road trip through the region’s ranching towns. Come here not for grandeur but for the texture of how an ordinary town built something to last — and for the reminder that behind many a quiet church lies a determined society of women who made it possible.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · A.H.P. McCurdy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Martha (Reagan) Rabb (February 25, 1826-March 20, 1901)
Robstown, TX
Martha Reagan Rabb (1826–1901) came to Texas from Tennessee and, with her husband John, built a successful open-range cattle operation near Banquete under the Bow and Arrow brand. When John died in 1872 leaving more than 10,000 head, Martha took the reins and changed course entirely—foreseeing the end of the free range, she bought land aggressively during the panic of the raid-plagued Nueces strip. Within a year she owned over 43,000 fenced acres, earning her the title "Texas Cattle Queen."
Alice
Alice, TX
In the 1880s two rail lines crossed in what was then Nueces County, and a townsite sprang up at the junction. Known first as Bandana and then Kleberg, it settled on the name Alice when a post office was granted in 1888, and homes, schools, and churches followed. Texas Rangers based their south Texas operations here, and in 1911 Alice became the seat of the newly created Jim Wells County.
McGill Brothers Building
Alice, TX
Sons of a Mississippi family, the McGill brothers built one of South Texas's notable ranching operations, purchasing the Santa Rosa Ranch in 1916 and rising to lead the Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. In 1941 Frank McGill erected this office building for the family's ranching enterprise, reportedly patterning it after San Antonio's Alamo, which had impressed him on a visit. With its corbelled stone parapet and Greek touches, it later passed to a museum corporation as a South Texas landmark.
Jim Wells County
Alice, TX
Carved from Nueces County and organized in 1911, Jim Wells County took its name from Judge James B. Wells, a leading South Texas lawyer and political power. Born near Aransas Pass in 1854, Wells shaped the region's Democratic politics for decades until his death at Brownsville in 1923. Alice was chosen as the county seat.