First United Methodist Church of Lovelady
Lovelady, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This church was organized in 1872, the year Lovelady was founded. It grew from a Sunday School started by Mrs. J.R.B. Barbee and was chartered by The Rev. William Bonner, a circuit rider, with the assistance of The Rev. J.C. Woolam. For many years services were conducted in the 1872 Presbyterian sanctuary at this site, which the Methodists acquired in 1892. A new facility was built here in 1910. Since the earliest days of the town, the First United Methodist Church of Lovelady has been a leader in the area's development.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1872, the very year the town of Lovelady was founded, this church grew from a Sunday School begun by Mrs. J.R.B. Barbee and was chartered by the circuit rider William Bonner. For years the Methodists worshiped in the 1872 Presbyterian sanctuary they acquired in 1892, before building a new facility here in 1910.
Why it matters
Founded alongside the town itself, the congregation illustrates how church and community rose together in the settling of rural East Texas.
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Related people
- · Rev. William Bonner
- · Mrs. J.R.B. Barbee
- · Rev. J.C. Woolam
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Town of Lovelady
Lovelady, TX
Lovelady arose when Houston and Great Northern Railroad investors ran their line through a grant belonging to Cyrus Lovelady, drawing settlers from nearby communities like Nevil's Prairie, Pennington, and Weldon. With its post office, livery, blacksmith, and hotels, the town quickly became a market and shipping point; by 1876 school met in a log house, and an 1881 two-story building was shared by Baptists and a Masonic lodge. Incorporated in 1927, it settled into life as a center for ranching and pulpwood.
Center Hill Cemetery
Lovelady, TX
The Ellis family came from Mississippi to Texas in 1839, part of the wave of southern settlers pushing into the region in the years before statehood. Charles McHenry Ellis raised a large family here, and in 1876 his son deeded land, including the family burial ground, for use as a church and cemetery. Among its early graves is that of Elizabeth Lovelady Ellis, alongside unmarked graves believed to be those of enslaved people and, later, military veterans.
Antioch Cemetery
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Begun in the era of a vanished village first known as Neville's Prairie, this East Texas burial ground took the name Antioch in 1890 when a new post office rechristened the settlement. Its more than a thousand graves hold both enslaved people and pioneer settlers, a record in stone of a community that had faded away by the 1930s. The oldest documented burial dates to 1870.
Rockland Cemetery, Church and School
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Benjamin Thomas Ellis, born in Alabama in 1825, came to Texas as a boy and by mid-century was farming the land around this site, where his family began burying its dead. Two of the men laid here—John Milliken and Ellis himself—served in the Texas militia during the Confederacy. In 1890 the family deeded the ground to a new Rockland Church, and by 1892 a combined church and school stood before the cemetery, serving as a community center until the school consolidated with Lovelady in the 1940s.