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.
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Related people
- · Thomas Jefferson Milam
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church of Richardson
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In the years after the Civil War, as central Texas farming communities took root, a small band of twenty charter members gathered in 1870 under a Cumberland Presbyterian banner, worshiping first in a family home before raising a one-room frame sanctuary on donated land. Over the next century the congregation moved, grew, and rebuilt several times, taking the name First Presbyterian Church of Richardson in 1983. Its long-running Sunday School and outreach ministries—blood drives, clinics, and food pantries—kept it woven into the life of a town that grew up around it.
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