First Presbyterian Church of Pleasanton
Pleasanton, Atascosa County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1914, Reverend N.H. Doggett, an evangelist for the Western Texas Presbytery, brought his traveling tent to Pleasanton. On March 29, 1914, the Presbyterian Church in Pleasanton was established, the first in the county. Services were held once a month with Sunday school classes offered weekly. Local business owner P.A. Vance donated land and funding for the church to construct a building on Virginia Street. The first service was held in February 1915. Reverend George Faison was the first resident minister. In 1958 the church moved to its current location on Bryant Street. Through faith and community outreach, the First Presbyterian Church in Pleasanton has made a significant impact on Atascosa county.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1914 evangelist N.H. Doggett pitched his traveling tent in Pleasanton, and on March 29 that year organized the county's first Presbyterian congregation, with monthly services and weekly Sunday school. Local businessman P.A. Vance donated land and funds for a church on Virginia Street, where the first service was held in early 1915 under the congregation's first resident minister, George Faison. The church later relocated to Bryant Street in 1958 and has remained a fixture of Pleasanton's civic and spiritual life.
Why it matters
The congregation's tent-revival beginnings reflect how itinerant preaching seeded lasting churches across small-town Texas in the early 20th century.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · N.H. Doggett
- · P.A. Vance
- · George Faison
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pleasanton School Integration
Pleasanton, TX
Pleasanton had educated its African American children at the Abraham Lincoln School since 1913, and by the mid-1950s Black and white students were already practicing and playing sports together. When the Lincoln School proved inadequate and Texas's House Bill 65 required a community petition and vote before integration, Pleasanton's residents supplied both, approving the measure 343 to 88 on October 26, 1957. Days later nine Black students entered the new high school before assembled press, welcomed by their classmates in a transition that recorded no violence.
Ralph Roy Smith
Jourdanton, TX
Ralph Roy "Railroad" Smith settled in Atascosa County around 1907, practicing law and running a newspaper before winning a seat in the Texas House in 1908. During his first session he single-handedly sponsored the bill that created the Texas State Library and Historical Commission. A booster of his adopted region, he moved his paper to Jourdanton in 1909 and championed shifting the county seat there the following year.
St. Matthew Catholic Parish
Jourdanton, TX
In a young railroad town founded in 1909, Catholic families of Hispanic, Irish, Polish, German, and Czech descent came together to build a parish, dedicating a mission-style brick church in 1912 on donated land. Over the following decades the parish anchored community life—opening a school, hosting the town's first Fourth of July picnic, and nurturing fraternal societies from the Knights of Columbus to a Czech Sokol gymnastics group. It weathered closures and rebuildings, even carrying its original cast-iron bell into a new 1961 church.
Jourdanton I.S.D
Jourdanton, TX
When early-20th-century enrollment outgrew scattered county schools like the Hilburn School, Jourdanton residents petitioned the legislature and in 1911 won the first independent school district in Atascosa County. They passed bonds for a three-story brick school, later adding a high school, football field, and a WPA-built gymnasium in 1938, before moving to the present campus in 1953. Through two world wars that pulled teachers into service and war-bond drives onto campus, the district kept educating generations who often returned to teach.