First United Methodist Church of Waxahachie
Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the spring of 1849, the Rev. Falacius Reynolds and nine charter members met in the cabin of E. W. and Nancy Rogers in the new settlement of Waxahachie and established a Methodist society. The congregation erected its first house of worship in 1852. A new building, built in 1856, was shared with local Cumberland Presbyterian and Baptist congregations. In 1866 the Central Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was organized at the Waxahachie church. A third building, erected in 1893, was lost to a fire in 1904 and was replaced in 1905. The congregation struggled through the Depression era to flourish in the 1940s and 1950s. A fifth church complex was erected in 1950. Church members remain active in community service. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the spring of 1849, a Methodist society of ten gathered in a settler's cabin in the new town of Waxahachie, raising their first church three years later. An 1856 building was shared with Presbyterian and Baptist neighbors, and in 1866 the site hosted the organizing of the Central Texas Conference. Successive buildings rose, burned, and were rebuilt as the congregation endured the Depression and flourished at mid-century.
Why it matters
The congregation's long life traces the frontier settlement of central Texas, where churches were among the first institutions binding scattered pioneers into a community.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Falacius Reynolds
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Presiding Elder's House
Waxahachie, TX
This 1901 house was built for Mrs. M.J. Cooke, who sold it the next year to the Methodist Conference as a parsonage for the presiding elder overseeing the Waxahachie district. For more than four decades it housed thirteen church officials, beginning with the Rev. O.F. Sensabaugh, its late-Victorian porch, gables, and windows marking the standing of the district superintendent. It is a rare survivor among the administrative homes of organized frontier Methodism.
First Presbyterian Church Building
Waxahachie, TX
The Rev. J.A. Smiley gathered sixteen charter members into Waxahachie's First Presbyterian Church in 1871, and after an 1876 building the congregation raised this classical sanctuary in 1916–17, with modified Doric columns, beaux-arts detailing, and art-glass windows. When the church merged with another in 1979, the building became a fine-arts museum under the Ellis County Art Association. Its dignified front still commands its corner of the county seat.
St. Joseph Catholic Church
Waxahachie, TX
Waxahachie's Catholic story began in 1859 with two immigrant brothers, joined by a German family in 1870 and Irish stonemasons who came in 1871 to build the county courthouse, keeping the faith in their homes until Father Claude Marie Thion organized St. Joseph parish with twenty members in 1874. He said the first Mass in 1875 and performed Ellis County's first Catholic wedding in 1877. Through property trades, reinterments, and steady growth, the congregation grew to more than 1,300 diverse families across two centuries.
McKinney-Aday Farm House
Waxahachie, TX
Henry McKinney rode a year with Company C of the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion before settling near Waxahachie, where he and his wife Viola bought a 71-acre tract in the fertile Blackland Prairie in 1903. In 1913 he hired local builder Jack Harris to raise this 2,000-square-foot Prairie-Style farmhouse, its wrap-around porch, dormers, and cedar-shake roof completed that August. With its original barn, corrals, and chicken house still standing, it remains one of rural Ellis County's few intact early-20th-century family farmsteads.