First United Methodist Church of Lancaster
Lancaster, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Itinerant preachers often met with local Methodists in early days of settlement. Organized on May 25, 1868, by the Rev. Andrew Davis, this is one of the oldest churches in North Texas. Services were held in Masonic Hall until a church building was erected in 1874. This had separate entrances and seating for men and women, in the Victorian manner. After a new church was constructed in 1911, the original building was used as a Sunday School annex, but was later razed. The present sanctuary, erected in 1957, stands on site of the original church.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized on May 25, 1868, by the Rev. Andrew Davis, this is among the oldest churches in North Texas, its early members worshiping in the Masonic Hall until a building rose in 1874. That first sanctuary reflected Victorian custom with separate entrances and seating for men and women. A larger church followed in 1911, and the present sanctuary, built in 1957, stands on the site of the original.
Why it matters
The congregation's long life, and its once-segregated Victorian seating, offer a window into the social conventions and enduring institutions of frontier-era North Texas.
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Related people
- · Andrew Davis
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Town of Lancaster
Lancaster, TX
Kentucky-born A. Bledsoe settled here in 1846 and, with the Rawlins family, laid out this town around 1852, naming it Lancaster after the Kentucky town his grandfather had founded. Stores, churches, a school, and mills soon clustered on the one-square-mile townsite, and during the Civil War a Confederate pistol factory operated here. The town weathered repeated fires and the rise and fall of Randolph College, living for a century as a cotton-market town whose fortunes rose and fell with the crop.
First Baptist Church of Lancaster
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Lancaster's Baptists met in private homes through the 1840s and 1850s before fourteen charter members formally organized in 1867, worshiping first in a shared Masonic Hall and baptizing converts in Ten Mile Creek. In 1873 they built the town's first church building, its steeple bell now displayed in the churchyard. The congregation grew across successive buildings and a Ladies Aid Society that helped fund the first parsonage.
W. A. Strain Home
Lancaster, TX
This ornate frame Victorian was built in 1895–96 for W. A. and Minnie Strain, whose pioneer family had bought the Lancaster property back in 1846. Its fishscale shingling and elaborate porch trim were the work of noted Dallas architect James E. Flanders of the Flanders-Moad firm. The Strains' son later raised his own family of four daughters in the house, keeping it in the family across generations.
First Christian Church of Lancaster
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