First United Methodist Church Richardson
Richardson, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of Richardson, Texas, in 1886, the church was first served by circuit-riding preacher Thomas Jefferson Milam (1843 - 1917). For the first twelve years, services were held in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1898, the congregation bought one acre of land on Greenville Avenue from the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, and a white frame church was built. A parsonage was added in 1912, and a pump organ was purchased in 1916. As membership increased, the small church proved inadequate, and final services were held there in April 1924. A new red brick building was opened in 1925, and the congregation became a full station in 1932. The church purchased land on Beltline Road in 1954. A fellowship hall, serving as a temporary sanctuary, and a 22-room educational building were opened on April 13, 1958. A new educational building was erected in July 1960, and the sanctuary and administrative offices were dedicated on September 13, 1964. An activities building was completed in 1972 and a chapel in 1982. With the 1968 merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the name was changed to First United Methodist Church Richardson. The church experienced tremendous growth beginning in the 1960s, growing to 6,000 members. Additional land was acquired over the years and the campus was expanded. In 1999, acreage was purchased on Central Expressway between Beltline and Arapaho roads. The congregation broke ground on April 18, 2004 and held opening worship at the new campus on March, 26, 2006. The church continues to live out the mission of the United Methodist Church. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1886 as a Methodist Episcopal Church, South, this Richardson congregation was first served by circuit-riding preacher Thomas Jefferson Milam and worshipped for a dozen years in a borrowed Presbyterian building. From a white frame church on Greenville Avenue it grew through a series of ever-larger campuses, swelling to some 6,000 members amid the suburban boom that transformed the Dallas area after the 1960s. Its long building history mirrors the town's growth from railroad crossroads to major suburb.
Why it matters
The church's expansion charts how a small farming settlement became part of a sprawling metropolitan region in postwar America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1880s the area around Richardson was farm country on the blackland prairie north of Dallas. Its rich, dark soil was well suited to cotton and grain. The Houston and Texas Central Railroad had come through in the previous decade, and small depot towns grew up along the tracks, where farmers could ship crops and pick up goods. The fact that this congregation later bought its first land from the railroad itself shows how closely the town's early life was tied to the line.
The church began as a congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. That denomination came out of the 1844 split in American Methodism over slavery, and it was the dominant Methodist body across the former Confederacy. In thinly settled places, Methodists depended on circuit riders: traveling preachers who served several congregations in turn, often on horseback, long before most small towns could support a full-time pastor.
The church's later history moves through the whole twentieth century. American Methodism reunited in stages, and in 1968 The Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church, which is why this congregation's name changed that year. Meanwhile the land around it went from farm fields to suburb as metropolitan Dallas pushed north after World War II.
People & events
The congregation's first shepherd was Thomas Jefferson Milam, a circuit-riding preacher who lived from 1843 to 1917. When the church was organized in 1886, it did not have a building. For twelve years, members worshipped in the local Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Sharing space between denominations was common in small towns, where neighbors of different churches often helped each other until each group could stand on its own.
In 1898 the Methodists finally bought an acre on Greenville Avenue from the Houston and Texas Central Railroad and built a white frame church. Over the next years they added the comforts of a settled congregation: a parsonage in 1912 and a pump organ in 1916. By the early 1920s the little church could not hold everyone. Its last services were held in April 1924, and a red brick building opened in 1925. In 1932 the church became a full station, meaning it had its own pastor instead of sharing one on a circuit.
After that, the story is one of steady growth. The congregation bought land on Beltline Road in 1954 and opened a fellowship hall and a 22-room educational building in 1958. A sanctuary followed in 1964, then an activities building and a chapel. Beginning in the 1960s, membership grew to about 6,000. In 1999 the church bought land on Central Expressway, broke ground in 2004 and held its first worship at the new campus in 2006. That is quite a distance from the borrowed pews where it began.
Its place in the American story
This congregation's history works almost like a timeline of American Protestantism. It began in a denomination created by the sectional crisis before the Civil War. It depended at first on the circuit-riding system that carried Methodism across the frontier. It finally joined the United Methodist Church through the reunions and mergers of the twentieth century. Few single congregations show all of those chapters so clearly.
It also tells the story of the American suburb. After World War II, cities across the country spread outward along new highways, and small railroad towns became bedroom communities. Richardson became part of a booming metropolitan region, and the church kept moving and expanding to keep up with the families pouring in. Its trail of buildings, from Greenville Avenue to Beltline Road to Central Expressway, follows that change on the map.
The church's heavy investment in educational buildings shows something broader too. In the postwar baby boom, suburban churches became centers of family life, with Sunday schools, youth programs and fellowship halls built for a flood of young households. This congregation's building record is a local version of that nationwide pattern.
If you visit
Today's First United Methodist Church Richardson is a large, active congregation, so expect a busy modern campus rather than a quiet historic chapel. The marker is valuable for the long view it offers. Read it, then picture the white frame church on a one-acre railroad lot, and the circuit rider who first gathered this flock.
If you like tracing history on the ground, the three locations in the marker make a simple drive through Richardson: Greenville Avenue, where the first church stood; Beltline Road, where the congregation grew in the postwar decades; and Central Expressway, where it moved in the 2000s. Together they show how the town grew from its railroad core to its highway corridors.
Please be respectful: this is a living place of worship, and services and events may be going on. Richardson is easy to add to a day exploring the history of the Dallas area, and it's a good reminder that a lot of Texas history shows up in suburbs as well as in old courthouse squares.
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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Related people
- · Thomas Jefferson Milam
Themes & tags
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