First United Methodist Church of Taft
Taft, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
E. A. Hunter was appointed pastor to the Taft, Gregory, Portland and Ingleside circuit in 1910. Methodists in Taft and Gregory worked together to build Methodist worship and religious education in the area. A Methodist Sunday school had been meeting in Gregory since 1876. The Rev. Mr. Hunter organized the Taft Methodist Church in December 1910. The Rev. R. C. Aubrey was assigned to the circuit in 1911. The Taft and Gregory congregations held a joint revival, bringing in forty new Methodists. The entire circuit pooled its funds in order to raise a thousand dollars for the building of the new Southern Methodist University in 1911, as well. The Methodist and Presbyterian congregations in Taft shared the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company assembly hall and later the Taft School building. The two congregations built a new facility in 1921 on land given by the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company. It was the first permanent church building in Taft. The two groups separated in 1923 when Methodists decided to erect their own building. That year the Methodist and Presbyterian congregations in Gregory voted to merge with the Taft churches. In November 1924 a new Taft Methodist Church building was completed. The church continued to grow, erecting new facilities as needed. A new sanctuary was formally opened on Easter Sunday, 1949. Membership increased dramatically in the 1950s, and plans for a new educational plant began in 1954 and were expanded in 1955. The Taft United Methodist Church congregation has been active in the community, from the Epworth League (organized in 1924) to a lay witness program begun in the 1980s to the modern family programs organized in the 1990s. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in December 1910 as part of a circuit spanning Taft, Gregory, Portland and Ingleside, this Methodist congregation shared halls and school buildings with local Presbyterians before erecting the first permanent church in Taft in 1921 on land given by the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company. The two denominations parted in 1923, and a new Methodist building followed in 1924, with a fresh sanctuary opening on Easter Sunday, 1949. Its members even pooled scarce funds to help launch Southern Methodist University in 1911.
Why it matters
It shows how church life anchored the company towns of the Coleman-Fulton ranch country during South Texas's early-twentieth-century development.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company
Taft, TX
Organized in 1879 from an earlier cattle partnership, the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company ran 167,000 acres of South Texas range and pioneered fencing the open range and shipping cattle by boat from its own wharves. Financial troubles passed control to Ohio investor David Sinton, whose son-in-law Charles P. Taft lent the ranch its name; under manager Joseph F. Green it became one of the state's largest and most innovative operations. The company town of Taft, platted in 1904, outlived the ranch, whose enterprises were sold off by 1928.
President William Howard Taft Visits Taft
Taft, TX
In 1908 Charles P. Taft, a director of the sprawling 165,000-acre Taft Ranch, invited his half-brother, President-elect William Howard Taft, to visit the Gulf Coast community that bore the family name. Elaborate preparations followed—a nine-hole golf course and a 22-room hotel for the press—and in October 1909 the President's railroad car arrived, met by the Texas governor. Taft toured the town, spoke at the school, ate ice cream at the company creamery, and enjoyed a barbecue and rodeo held in his honor before addressing a crowd of 15,000 in Corpus Christi.
Sodville Community
Sinton, TX
In 1907–08 an Iowa land developer partnered with the vast Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company to market 56,000 acres of South Texas brushland to Midwestern buyers, and Mexican migrant laborers cleared mesquite so thick that prospects had to blaze their own trails. The settlement that grew here took the promotional name Sodville for its fertile soil, sprouting a school, stores, cotton gins, and churches through the 1910s and 1920s. As rural Texans drifted toward cities after mid-century, its school consolidated, its stores closed, and by 2000 only a corner and a few homes remained.
Site of West Portland
Portland, TX
After the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad reached this area in the 1880s, a 1908 land deal handed 14,000 acres to an Iowa promoter who mounted a huge advertising campaign, drawing trainloads of prospective buyers—mostly from Kansas—to settle West Portland. Mexican migrant workers cleared the mesquite and farmers worked the rich black soil, building a school that doubled as a community center and, in 1922, a cooperative cotton gin that became the heart of the district. The school consolidated with Taft in 1939, but descendants of the original settlers still own much of the land.