First United Methodist Church of Kingsville
Kingsville, Kleberg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH OF KINGSVILLE The first Methodist worship service in Kingsville was on March 4, 1904. The Reverend C. S. Mills, a pastor from Corpus Christi, conducted the service with thirty-one attendants sitting under mesquite trees. Services continued in local businesses and the Presbyterian Church until 1908 when a church building was erected for the congregation. The first service was held there in January of 1909. A new church building was erected next door in 1926. A new sanctuary was completed in 1951 and is the current sanctuary. The congregation’s history of missionary work and community service has contributed to the growth and success of the area. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Kingsville's first Methodist service was held on March 4, 1904, when a visiting Corpus Christi pastor preached to thirty-one worshippers seated under mesquite trees in the brand-new railroad town on the King Ranch. The congregation moved from storefronts and a borrowed Presbyterian church into its own building by 1909, and grew through a succession of sanctuaries to the one completed in 1951. Its decades of missionary and community work helped anchor the young South Texas town.
Why it matters
Founding churches were among the first institutions to give order and community to the raw new towns that the railroads planted across turn-of-the-century Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church of Kingsville
Kingsville, TX
Tradition says the first Presbyterians in Kingsville worshipped in the shade of mesquite trees before formally organizing in January 1905, meeting at the Kingsville Lumber Company under the Rev. A.H.P. McCurdy. Henrietta King and the Kleberg Town and Improvement Company—the interests behind the great King Ranch town—donated the land, and the congregation dedicated its first sanctuary in 1906.
Englishmen in South Texas, 1568
Kingsville, TX
More than half a century before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth, three English sailors trekked through South Texas in 1568. They were survivors of Sir John Hawkins's ill-fated trading voyage, put ashore near Tampico after a Spanish attack and left to walk north through unknown country. Of the twenty-six who headed north, only Richard Browne, David Ingram, and Richard Twide are said to have reached Europe again—Ingram later describing to Queen Elizabeth's secretary the coastal peoples, the grasslands of the Rio Grande, and the prickly pear that kept them alive.
Chamberlain Cemetery
Kingsville, TX
At the turn of the 20th century, King Ranch owner Henrietta King and neighboring ranchers backed the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway to move cattle to market, and the new railroad town of Kingsville rose around its headquarters. In 1908 a cemetery association bought forty acres and opened Chamberlain Cemetery the next year, naming it for Henrietta's father, pioneer minister Hiram Chamberlain. It became the resting place of Henrietta and Captain King, railroad visionary Uriah Lott, and other builders of South Texas.
Mexican Activities at Santa Gertrudis in the 1830's
Kingsville, TX
This camp on the Santa Gertrudis was a strategic waypoint during the Texas Revolution, hosting the northward march of General José Urrea's column of Santa Anna's army in early 1836. Among those who passed through were figures on both sides of the era's brutality — the merciful "Angel of Goliad" and Colonel Garay, alongside Colonel Portilla, who carried out the Palm Sunday execution of Texan prisoners at Goliad. After the Mexican defeat at San Jacinto, the same ground witnessed the ragged southward retreat of thousands of soldiers, camp followers, and captured livestock.