First Presbyterian Church
Denison, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Presbyterian Board of Home Missions commissioned Reverend Josiah Milligan to oversee Presbyterian outreach in Texas. Rev. Milligan chose to office in Denison and began holding services in his living room. On December 22, 1872, he organized the First Presbyterian Church in Denison. Charter members were Samuel and Sarah Hanna, Alex and Sarah Acheson, Rebecca Craighead, Eugene Sutta, Mrs. M.B. Milligan, Mary Milligan, Martha Nevins, S.H. Ruthraff, and C.B. and Ella Berry. Seeking a larger meeting space, the congregation petitioned the mayor to hold worship services in the town hall until land was donated by the Denison Town Company for a permanent church home. A simple, wood frame building was completed in January of 1874. In 1900, the structure was enlarged, but burned in a fire two years later. The structure was rebuilt in 1904, with a new educational building and chapel added in 1951. In 1966, the 1904 building was razed in order to build a new sanctuary that is still used today. The congregation often volunteered their time to help those in need. During the last winter of World War II, the ladies of the church met wartime troop trains at Denison's Katy depot with offers of sandwiches, cookies, coffee, and conversation, despite the secrecy of military train movements. In addition to volunteer efforts, many members of the First Presbyterian Church went on to serve in key leadership positions in state, local, and county government. Today, the oldest church congregation in the city of Denison continues to aid its neighbors through service and outreach. 175 Years of Texas Independence * 1836-2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions sent Reverend Josiah Milligan to the young railroad town of Denison, he began holding services in his own living room, organizing this congregation in December 1872 with a handful of charter members. From a borrowed town hall the church moved to donated land and a frame sanctuary, weathering a fire, rebuildings, and a new mid-century sanctuary. Its members long served the town — the church women famously met wartime troop trains at the Katy depot with sandwiches and coffee.
Why it matters
As Denison's oldest congregation, the church chronicles the founding of a railroad boomtown and the everyday service that knit a frontier community together.
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Related people
- · Josiah Milligan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. Luke's Church
Denison, TX
Denison's oldest house of worship and the oldest Episcopal sanctuary in Grayson County, St. Luke's grew from a site given by the Denison Town Company and a visit from Alexander Gregg, the first bishop of Texas, in May 1873. The cornerstone was laid in 1875 by Bishop A.C. Garrett of the Missionary District of Northern Texas, who consecrated the church in 1876. That original building still forms the nave of the present church.
Lone Star Masonic Lodge No. 403, A. F. & A. M.
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Chartered on June 6, 1874, just a year after Denison itself was founded, Lone Star Masonic Lodge grew alongside the young railroad town. Its members met in several locations before raising this brick hall, built in two stages in 1900 and 1915 and topped by a distinctive bracketed eave. The completed hall was dedicated on New Year's Eve 1915, with ceremonies carrying into the first day of 1916.
Waples Memorial United Methodist Church
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When the newly established railroad town of Denison counted forty Methodists in 1873, the North Texas conference sent the Rev. Alexander Jamison to organize them, and the little frame mission church was chartered in 1881. It took the name of E.B. Waples, a benefactor who cleared its debt for a single dollar and funded a larger building shortly before his death in 1898. Today it is remembered as the oldest continuing Methodist congregation in Denison.
Joseph G. McCoy, Promoter of Chisholm Trail
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An Illinois livestock broker, Joseph G. McCoy (1837–1915) opened the first workable market for Texas cattle by securing rail cars and building loading pens at Abilene, Kansas — turning $5 longhorns into beeves worth $25 or more up north. He had part of Jesse Chisholm's trail surveyed and marked to guide the great drives through Oklahoma, over which some ten million cattle moved between 1866 and 1884. When the railroad reached Denison in 1872, McCoy moved here and helped launch a refrigerating company to ship dressed beef.