First Presbyterian Church of Taft

🏛️The era

Taft grew up on ranch land. In the early 20th century, the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Co. controlled a huge spread on the Texas coastal bend, and the town took its name from the Taft family. Charles P. Taft, half-brother of President William Howard Taft, was among the company's leading investors. As the ranch turned toward farming and townbuilding, the company laid out communities, built facilities and shaped daily life.

New towns rarely had enough people or money for a church of every denomination. Early worship was improvised. Christians of several traditions shared a tent, and different pastors took turns preaching. In 1909, the company built a school and assembly hall, and local Presbyterians and Methodists alternated Sundays there.

This was the era when the coastal plains were filling with farmers and townspeople, and when railroads and agriculture were transforming South Texas. Churches were among the first institutions settlers built, and in company towns they often grew up with the company's help.

👥People & events

In 1918, the Presbyterians began meeting in the school building. Two years later, in 1920, the First Presbyterian Church of Taft formally organized with 28 charter members, and the Rev. C.S. Long became its first minister. That same year the Presbyterians and Methodists built a sanctuary together on this site, on land provided by the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Co.

The congregation kept building. In 1922 it bought a house in Rockport, moved it to a lot next to the sanctuary and made it the manse. In 1923 it bought out the Methodists' share of the sanctuary, and in 1924 the Presbyterians of nearby Gregory transferred their membership to Taft.

Over the following decades, members added facilities and formed a women's auxiliary along with men's and youth groups. The church supported regional efforts during World War II. It sponsored other area churches, a Presbyterian girls' school and Vacation Bible School for children from its own congregation and from Rising Star Baptist Church.

For more than three decades, from 1957 to 1991, members staged a live nativity scene every Christmas. When the tradition ended, they gave the costumes and equipment to the First Baptist Church so the story could go on being told. Membership declined in the late 20th century along with the town's population, but the congregation still serves its community.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Churches like Taft's Presbyterian congregation are a reminder of how American towns were actually built. People of different denominations who might have stayed apart in older communities shared tents, halls and even a sanctuary because a young town could not afford to do otherwise.

Taft's story also reflects the company towns of the early 20th century, when large landholding enterprises supplied the land and buildings that public institutions later took over. Here a ranching company that became a townbuilder provided the school, the hall and the church site.

The congregation's long record of cooperation, sponsoring other churches, hosting children from a neighboring Baptist church and handing its nativity tradition to another congregation, shows how small-town churches have served as civic institutions. That role runs from the home-front efforts of World War II to the slow population losses that challenged many small towns in the late 20th century.

🧭If you visit

Taft sits in San Patricio County on the flat, wide-open coastal plain north of Corpus Christi, where farmland stretches toward the Gulf. The marker stands at the site the company provided in 1920, where Presbyterians and Methodists first built a sanctuary together.

As you look around, notice how the church property grew over time: the manse that was moved in from Rockport, and the facilities members added over the decades. If you visit near Christmas, think of the live nativity that ran here for 35 seasons.

Taft makes an easy stop on a coastal bend road trip. It lies within reach of Rockport, Gregory and Corpus Christi, and it pairs well with other sites telling the story of how great ranches became farms and towns. Please be respectful of the active congregation.