First United Methodist Church of Euless
Euless, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the late 1860s, families began moving to this area from Bedford and Coffee Counties, Tennessee, areas steeped in Methodism. Local Methodists believed to number around 50, began meeting about 1876. The following year, the Woodlawn Grange, a local unit of the National Farmers' Organization, built a hall, and residents of different denominations utilized the space for worship services and Sunday school classes. The Methodist congregation may have been known as Woodlawn Church before becoming Grange Hall Church. In 1879, pioneer settler Elisha Adam Euless bought the property that included the hall. He operated a gin nearby, and the community, which had been called Woodlawn, came to be known as Euless by the time a post office opened in the late 1880s. During that same period, the Methodists built their first sanctuary on this site, across Main Street from the Grange Hall. John W. and Jane Huffman deeded the property to the church, which built a brush arbor behind the sanctuary for revivals. Circuit riding pastors served the church for years, and in 1917 the Central Texas Methodist Conference created a separate Euless circuit. Members built a new church and a parsonage for a pastor, who served the Euless church and others. In 1944, the church assumed support of a full-time pastor. The development of the First United Mehtodist Church has mirrored that of Euless, which was a small rural town until the mid-20th century. As the church engaged in new construction and expansion, growth from nearby Fort Worth and Dallas brought more residents, as well as new members. Throughout its history, the congregation has responded to the needs of its members and community through worship, education and service.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the late 1860s, Methodist families from Tennessee settled this corner of Tarrant County and began meeting for worship, sharing a Grange hall with neighbors of other faiths. As pioneer Elisha Adam Euless gave his name to the growing community, the congregation built its first sanctuary and welcomed circuit-riding preachers who covered a wide rural territory. The church grew alongside the town, and when Fort Worth and Dallas sprawl reached Euless in the mid-twentieth century, both congregation and community expanded together.
Why it matters
The church's story mirrors the transformation of countless rural American communities — from a scattered farming settlement served by circuit riders into a suburb absorbed by a metropolitan region.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Elisha Adam Euless
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pleasant Glade Baptist Church
Colleyville, TX
Pleasant Glade Baptist Church was organized in September 1923 by fourteen charter members drawn from the older Pleasant Run Baptist Church, settling into a frame building they moved from Cottonwood to this rural site. As a farming community, its members weathered the Great Depression better than their city neighbors and kept growing, building a parsonage by 1947 and a modern facility by 1963. Renamed First Baptist Church of Pleasant Glade in 1956, it even spun off a mission that became Bellevue Baptist Church.
Site of Oak Grove Methodist Church
Bedford, TX
Named for the wooded grove where it began in early 1886, Oak Grove Methodist Church started with 30 members as one of five churches on the Keller Circuit, complete with a brush arbor for summer revivals that drew neighbors of every faith. It gave rise to the Colleyville Methodist Church in 1924, but as population centers shifted, Oak Grove's own membership dwindled — from 99 in 1935 to just twelve by 1949, when it was dissolved. Its last building was moved to Colleyville and used there into the 1960s.
Sowers Community
Irving, TX
By 1856 Edmund and Freelove Sowers, newcomers from Illinois, had settled this corner of Dallas County, where neighbors farmed, hunted, and cut timber and Ed worked as a blacksmith. His general store, post office, and schoolhouse in the 1870s and '80s drew physicians and families until a small crossroads community — famous for its Fourth of July picnics and ballgames — took shape. Sustained by dairy and poultry, Sowers survived until Irving annexed it in the 1950s, leaving only its cemetery behind.
Nash Farm
Grapevine, TX
Established in 1859 by Kentucky migrants Thomas Jefferson Nash and his wife Elizabeth, this 450-acre farm is one of the last surviving nineteenth-century agrarian sites in North Texas. During the Civil War the Nash brothers left to serve with Confederate troops while Elizabeth and the children kept the farm; all returned to expand their holdings. The 1869 I-house, a crib barn, cistern, and family cemetery still stand, and in 1888 the Nashes gave right-of-way to the Cotton Belt Railroad that spurred the region's growth.