First United Methodist Church of Georgetown
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1849 as Georgetown Mission, organized 1874 but still served then by circuit riders, this church acquired a resident pastor in 1879. Original building was erected in 1881-82 on the Southwestern University campus. The present church structure was built in 1891-93, of native limestone, hand-cut at this site. Physics professor Robert S. Hyer was the supervising architect. The floor plan is modeled after the Greek cross. Bishops A. Frank Smith (1889-1962) and W. Angie Smith (1894-1974), brothers, made decisions to enter the ministry in this church. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Begun in 1849 as a frontier mission served by circuit-riding preachers, this Methodist congregation gained a resident pastor in 1879 and raised its first building on the young Southwestern University campus. The present limestone church, hand-cut on site in 1891–93 and laid out on the plan of a Greek cross, was overseen by physics professor Robert S. Hyer, and it later shaped the callings of two brothers who became Methodist bishops.
Why it matters
The church reflects the close bond between faith and the founding of higher education in nineteenth-century Texas.
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Related people
- · Robert S. Hyer
- · A. Frank Smith
- · W. Angie Smith
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Negro Fine Arts School
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In 1946 — two decades before Georgetown's schools integrated — Southwestern University professor Iola Bowden Chambers and three of her students began teaching piano to children in the city's African American community. Backed by the school board, the First Methodist Church, and university students, the Negro Fine Arts School grew to welcome more than 200 children, adding voice and art lessons, annual recitals, and college scholarships. Its graduates went on to earn music degrees and teach the next generation.
Original Site of Southwestern University
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Texas Methodists founded four colleges before the Civil War, and after the war the Rev. Dr. Francis Asbury Mood set out to consolidate them into a single, centralized university. Georgetown competed for the prize, offering this donated site, and in 1873 it was chosen as home to the new institution—chartered in 1875 as Southwestern University under a union of the four earlier schools. Mood led it until his death, and though the university moved to its present campus in 1900, a preparatory department lingered here until 1916.
Georgetown High School Building
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Rising in 1923–24 on ground that once held Southwestern University, this building served Georgetown's high school students for more than half a century. Austin architect Charles H. Page gave it a Spanish Colonial Revival face, crowned by a Baroque entryway whose cast-stone shells, flowers, urns, and garlands announced the community's pride in its schools. A gymnasium joined the rear in the 1940s as the school grew.
C.C. and Mattie Hughes Cody House
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Claude Carr Cody, a Georgia-born mathematician, spent 37 years at Southwestern University, becoming so central to the school that he was called its 'Grand Old Man.' In 1883 he married Mattie Hughes, whose father, a judge and legislator, gave the couple this lot, and by 1897 they had completed a Free Classic Queen Anne home distinguished by Doric columns, an octagonal bay, and an oval window.