First United Methodist Church of Cedar Hill
Cedar Hill, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first church occupied by this congregation was destroyed by a tornado in 1856, two years after the fellowship was organized. A frame building was erected in 1883 on a lot adjacent to this site. It was replaced in 1900 by this structure. Typical of many churches that once dominated the countryside, this edifice has an off-center entry tower and Gothic detailing. The bell placed here in 1900 still summons worshipers. RTHL - 1976
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1854, this Cedar Hill congregation lost its first church to a tornado just two years later, then worshiped in a frame building before raising the present structure in 1900. With its off-center entry tower and Gothic detailing, the church is a fine example of the country houses of worship that once dotted the Texas countryside. The bell installed in 1900 still calls the faithful to services.
Why it matters
Rural churches like this one were the architectural and social landmarks of nineteenth-century Texas, and the survival of this well-preserved 1900 sanctuary keeps that vanishing landscape visible.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of Cedar Hill
Cedar Hill, TX
Settlers drawn to a high prairie hilltop founded Cedar Hill in the late 1840s, when this was still the frontier edge of a young Texas. Its early economy served the surrounding farms until a disastrous tornado in 1856 checked its growth, and the arrival of the railroad in 1882 revived it. In the late twentieth century the old farm town gave way to suburban Dallas.
Little Bethel Cemetery
Duncanville, TX
This burial ground opened in 1856 with the graves of two small children and grew on land a pioneer donated in 1860 beside a small church later moved to Cedar Hill. Among those interred are relatives of John Neely Bryan, the first settler of Dallas, tying the cemetery to the earliest days of the region's Anglo settlement. It became a perpetual-care memorial park in 1966.
Trees Cemetery
Duncanville, TX
Crawford Trees came to Texas in 1845 and, after striking enough wealth in the 1849 California Gold Rush, returned to buy more than 5,000 acres of Dallas County land. He and his wife Anna donated ground for a school and church, and in 1856 they founded this cemetery after Anna's brother and a friend were killed in a shooting. Chiefly a family burial ground, it remains in use by Trees descendants today.
Penn Springs
Duncanville, TX
Two springs feeding a natural pool made this a vital watering place, first for Native peoples and later for the wagon trains and cattle drives moving along the Shawnee Trail. Major John Penn of Illinois settled his family here in the 1850s after first visiting in 1848, and on July 4, 1882, the springs hosted a Confederate reunion of Parson's Texas Cavalry. The Penns held the land until 1895 as Duncanville grew around it.