First United Methodist Church of Paris
Paris, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The beginning of this congregation can be traced to 1843, when the Rev. James Graham organized the First Methodist Church in the area. It later took the name Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Meanwhile, another congregation, Lamar Avenue Methodist Church, was formed. After the destructive Paris fire of 1916, the two churches decided to form one central downtown congregation, and the merger became official in 1918. The Rev. Robert P. Shuler was appointed first pastor of the new congregation, now known as First United Methodist Church of Paris.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Paris, Texas, congregation traces its roots to 1843, when the Rev. James Graham organized an early Methodist church in the area that became Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After the devastating Paris fire of 1916, it merged with Lamar Avenue Methodist Church to form a single downtown congregation in 1918 under the Rev. Robert P. Shuler.
Why it matters
Its long history mirrors the growth of Methodism on the north Texas frontier and the way a community rebuilt its institutions after disaster.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the Rev. James Graham gathered the first Methodist worshippers here in 1843, Texas was not yet part of the United States. It was an independent republic, barely seven years old, and the land that would become Lamar County sat on the northern edge of Anglo-American settlement, pressed up against the Red River and the frontier beyond.
Methodism traveled with the frontier. Its circuit-riding preachers were famous for going wherever people went, holding services in cabins, barns, and open clearings long before any town could afford a proper church building. A congregation founded in 1843 in north Texas was part of that restless, mobile faith spreading across a landscape still being surveyed and settled.
By the time the congregation took the name Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the broader church had already lived through a national rupture. In 1844 American Methodists split over slavery and church authority, and the southern branch went its own way. A church carrying "South" in its name is a quiet reminder of that division and of the era in which this community came of age.
People & events
The story here is really the story of two congregations that eventually became one. The Rev. James Graham planted the first seed in 1843, and over the following decades that body grew into Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Meanwhile, a second Methodist congregation, Lamar Avenue Methodist Church, took root and served its own corner of the growing town.
Then came 1916, and fire. Paris suffered a devastating blaze that year, the kind of disaster that reshapes a town's whole sense of itself. In the aftermath, the two Methodist congregations made a decision that was as practical as it was hopeful: rather than rebuild separately, they would join forces and form a single central congregation downtown.
The merger became official in 1918, and the new church called the Rev. Robert P. Shuler as its first pastor. Out of two histories, and out of the ashes of a citywide catastrophe, First United Methodist Church of Paris was born.
Its place in the American story
This congregation's arc traces a much larger American pattern. The spread of Methodism was one of the great engines of community-building on the frontier, and churches like this one often arrived alongside — or even ahead of — schools, courthouses, and stores. To follow this church from 1843 forward is to watch a raw settlement mature into an established town.
The 1916 fire and the 1918 merger speak to something deeply American as well: the way communities respond to disaster not just by rebuilding walls, but by consolidating and renewing their institutions. Fires repeatedly reshaped American towns in this era, and the decisions people made afterward often determined what kind of place would rise in the ashes.
The congregation's changing names — from an early Methodist church, to Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to today's First United Methodist Church — also mirror the larger journey of American Methodism itself, from frontier revival through sectional division and, eventually, toward reunion.
If you visit
Stand at this spot and let the dates do their work. A single congregation here reaches back to 1843, before Texas joined the Union — a span of history you can feel simply by lingering.
As you read the marker, look for the layering of names. Each one — the original Methodist church, Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Lamar Avenue, and finally First United Methodist Church of Paris — is a chapter, and together they tell a story of growth, division, disaster, and reunion in the heart of one north Texas town.
If you're building a road trip through Lamar County, this makes a natural stop in downtown Paris. Pair it with the town's other historic sites and you'll come away with a real sense of how a frontier community became a settled Texas city — and how it rebuilt its spiritual life after the fire of 1916 reshaped everything around it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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