First United Methodist Church of Lufkin
Lufkin, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Margaret (Fullerton) Abney, born in Alabama in 1829, joined the Methodist Church with her family at a camp meeting held at nearby McKendree Campground in 1863. Because the nearest Methodist church was ten miles away, Mrs. Abney held Bible study meetings in her home on Sunday afternoons. This group of Abney family and friends formed the nucleus of the membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, when it organized a Lufkin congregation in 1882. One of eight churches in the Homer circuit, the congregation met once a month in a local school building to hear the sermons of the Reverend H. H. Vaughan. In 1884 a 200-seat frame church building was erected in downtown Lufkin on land donated by the railroad. The building was shared with local Presbyterians and Baptists. By 1891, membership had grown to 100 and the pastor held services twice a month. Ten years later, the membership numbered 286 and the pastor was serving full-time. Completed in 1905 at a cost of $14,750, a new sanctuary seated more than 800 people. The church propsered, requiring an educational building by 1928. Despite the difficult times of the Depression era and World War II, the congregation continued to grow, and the church was relocated to Denman Avenue in 1959. By 1978, when the congregation celebrated the 100 years since Mrs. Abney began her Sunday School, the church complex included six buildings. The First United Methodist Church of Lufkin continues an active tradition of community and missionary service. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This East Texas congregation traces its roots to Margaret Abney, an Alabama-born Methodist who, finding the nearest church ten miles from Lufkin, opened her home for Sunday Bible study in the 1860s. That small gathering of family and friends became the nucleus of a Lufkin Methodist congregation formally organized in 1882, at first served only once a month by a circuit preacher. As the railroad town grew, so did the church, moving from a shared 200-seat frame building to an 800-seat sanctuary by 1905 and a six-building complex by the 1970s.
Why it matters
The church shows how a single determined woman's living-room Bible study could seed a lasting institution, a common but under-told pattern in the religious settlement of the American South.
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Related people
- · Margaret Fullerton Abney
Themes & tags
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