HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

First Presbyterian Church of Cisco

Cisco, Eastland County, Texas

Marker Inscription

When the town of Cisco was platted in May 1881, land at the corner of Eighth Street and Avenue G was set aside for use by a Presbyterian congregation. In August of that same year, local residents Lillie Hightower, Mrs. F.F. Lattimer, Mrs. J.A. Lee, and M.H. Lee organized this fellowship. An 1893 tornado destroyed the earliest sanctuary and a second building served until facilities at this site were completed in 1924. Active in local social services and international benevolences, the First Presbyterian Church of Cisco has played a significant role in the growth of the city. (1981)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

When Cisco was laid out in 1881, a corner lot was set aside for Presbyterians, and that August four local residents—three of them women—organized the fellowship. A tornado leveled the first sanctuary in 1893, and a second building carried the congregation until the present facilities were finished in 1924. Through it all the church wove itself into the town's charitable and social life.

Why it matters

Congregations founded in a town's earliest days—often by its women—supplied the social services and civic glue that turned raw railroad plats into real communities.

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Related people

  • · Lillie Hightower

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

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First Baptist Church of Cisco

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When Baptists first gathered here in 1878, they met in a one-room log schoolhouse in the little settlement of Red Gap, organizing seven area churches into an association. The town's fate turned on the rails: where the Texas & Pacific met the Houston & Texas Central, the new town of Cisco rose and Red Gap faded, so the congregation followed the tracks in 1881. Across the next half-century it endured a killing tornado, two building fires, and the bust of an early oil boom, meeting in city hall and schoolhouses until it could rebuild.