First Presbyterian Church of Leonard
Leonard, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation was organized as a mission of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., in 1875 at Valley Creek (3 mi. N) through the efforts of H. L. Parmele, the community's founder and leading merchant. The Rev. DeCosta Howard Dodson, a noted Christian educator, became the first pastor. After a spring storm damaged the church building in 1883, the congregation moved to the new town of Leonard, created by the coming of the Denison and Southeastern Railroad. They built the town's first church building on the corner of Houston and Main streets. In 1905 Leonard Presbyterian Church merged with the local Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which had been organized at Grove Hill (3.5 mi. NE) in 1870. The Rev. N. M. Grafton became the new pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, as it was named after the union. The church structure on this site was used for worship by the Cumberland Presbyterian congregation and continues in use today. Additional facilities were built as membership increased. Members here have included pioneer settlers and prominent community leaders who made significant contributions to the area's development and heritage.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1875 at Valley Creek through the efforts of the community's founding merchant, this Presbyterian congregation followed the railroad when the Denison and Southeastern line created the new town of Leonard, building the town's first church there after a storm wrecked its earlier home. In 1905 it merged with a nearby Cumberland Presbyterian congregation to become the First Presbyterian Church. Its history tracks how rail lines redrew the map of rural Texas.
Why it matters
It shows how the arrival of a railroad could uproot and relocate whole communities — and the churches that held them together.
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Related people
- · H. L. Parmele
- · DeCosta Howard Dodson
- · N. M. Grafton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Leonard
Leonard, TX
Settlers reached this corner of Fannin County in the 1840s and 50s, among them Solomon L. Leonard, a Confederate sympathizer who amassed 10,000 acres around Wildcat Thicket — a tangle of brush where fugitives and outlaws, and figures of the bloody Reconstruction-era Lee-Peacock feud, took cover. When the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad arrived in 1880, Leonard's heirs platted a townsite and auctioned lots at a picnic on this very square, an event still held every year. A saloon, hotel, post office, newspaper, and school followed, and Leonard became the market town of a rich farming district.
Savage
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After the Civil War, crossroads hamlets sprang up wherever a store could serve scattered farm families, and Savage community in Fannin County began just that way. William "Uncle Billy" Savage and his wife Elizabeth settled here in 1869 and, because the roads were so poor, kept extra goods to sell their neighbors; their store drew a doctor, blacksmith, cotton gin, school, church, and a post office by 1891. When new roads bypassed the village after World War I, Savage faded, and today its memory survives mainly in annual reunions.
Valley Creek
Leonard, TX
In 1869, eleven Presbyterian families from New York migrated to this spot to establish a mission colony, organized by Howard L. Parmele and his brother-in-law Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. Named for a nearby stream, Valley Creek blossomed in the 1870s with a store, sawmill, cotton gin, school, hotel, and churches, and formally organized its Presbyterian congregation in 1875. But when the railroads bypassed it in 1880 the town withered, its businesses moving to nearby Leonard, until only a church and cemetery remained.
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Drawn by fertile farmland, the earliest Anglo settlers reached this Fannin County locality—known as Wildcat Thicket—by the mid-1800s, and a community had formed by the 1870s. Settler A. J. Russell is said to have named Trenton for a hospital where he was treated during the Civil War. The railroad's arrival in 1881, along with a new post office, sparked a boom; Trenton incorporated in 1890 and outlasted many neighboring towns through the 20th century.