Follett United Methodist Church
Follett, Lipscomb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the early pioneer days of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle, circuit riders (ministers on horseback) provided pioneers with church services. In north Ivanhoe, Oklahoma, in 1903, a group of rural residents gathered to form the Ivanhoe Methodist Church, led by reverend G.L. Hayes. In 1911, the town relocated to south Ivanhoe and began to hold services at the Stillwater School located near the Texas border. In 1917, the church congregation relocated to the newly-formed town of Follett, Texas, located near the border and close to the railroad. Church worship services were held in the F.J. Birdsall building, later known as the E.E. King garage. By 1918, the congregation broke ground on a new basement building. Many people worshipped in the church basement for five years until membership outgrew the space. Fundraising allowed the church to build a modern structure in 1924 with a sanctuary and classrooms. In 1961, a new building was constructed on highway 15 with a fellowship hall, kitchen and pastor’s study. Over the last century, sixty-two ministers served the church and community. Throughout the years, the Follett United Methodist Church has played an important role in serving the local area through the support of youth programs, financial support, and local and foreign mission work. Despite membership of less than one hundred, the church’s outreach has impacted local and international communities since 1903. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Follett's Methodist congregation began in 1903 among panhandle pioneers served by horseback circuit riders, first gathering in Ivanhoe, Oklahoma. Following the railroad, the church moved to the new town of Follett, Texas, in 1917 and built a series of homes over the century — a basement church, a 1924 sanctuary, and a 1961 building on Highway 15.
Why it matters
Its migrations trace how frontier congregations followed settlers and railroads across the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the 20th century, the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle was raw, open country still in its pioneer days. Settlers were arriving to break the sod and build towns almost from nothing, and the ordinary institutions of community life — schools, stores, churches — had to be improvised, moved, and rebuilt as the population found its footing. This was frontier in the literal sense: land where the shape of settlement was not yet fixed.
Into that country rode the circuit riders — ministers on horseback who carried religion across distances too great and too thinly settled to support a settled clergy. It is an image straight out of the American frontier: a preacher covering a wide loop of homesteads and hamlets, holding services wherever people could gather, then riding on to the next. For scattered pioneer families, that horseback minister was often the only regular church they knew.
It was in exactly this world that the congregation began. In 1903, in north Ivanhoe, Oklahoma, a group of rural residents gathered under the Reverend G. L. Hayes to form the Ivanhoe Methodist Church. What followed over the next century is a story of a congregation that kept moving — because in frontier country, the people, the towns, and the railroads all moved, and a church that meant to survive had to move with them.
People & events
The Reverend G. L. Hayes gave the young congregation its start in 1903, and from there the story is one of relocation after relocation. In 1911 the town shifted to south Ivanhoe, and the congregation began meeting at the Stillwater School near the Texas border — a school doubling as a sanctuary, as so often happened where dedicated church buildings were a luxury.
Then, in 1917, the congregation crossed into the newly formed town of Follett, Texas, drawn to a spot near the border and close to the railroad — the great magnet that decided which frontier towns would live and which would fade. In Follett they worshiped first in the F. J. Birdsall building, a space later remembered as the E. E. King garage. By 1918 they had broken ground on a basement building, and there, below ground, the congregation worshiped for five years until it simply outgrew the room.
Growth kept pushing the church upward and onward. Fundraising paid for a modern structure in 1924, with a proper sanctuary and classrooms. In 1961 a new building went up on Highway 15, adding a fellowship hall, a kitchen, and a pastor's study. Across all those years and buildings, the inscription tells us, sixty-two ministers served the church and community — a long relay of leaders handing the work from one to the next.
Its place in the American story
This one small congregation traces, in its own moves, the larger pattern of how the American frontier was settled and held. Circuit riders on horseback were a signature feature of Methodist expansion across the young country's edges, bringing organized worship to places too new and too sparse to sustain it otherwise. To read this marker is to see that national practice touch down in one specific set of families.
The congregation's route also maps the deciding force of the railroad. The move to Follett in 1917 — chosen for its nearness to the rail line — is the story of countless frontier communities in miniature. Where the tracks went, towns rose; where they didn't, settlements withered. A church following the railroad was a church following its own people to wherever the future was being built.
And there is the quieter significance of endurance. A congregation of fewer than a hundred members has, by the marker's account, reached beyond its small town through youth programs, financial support, and mission work near and far for over a century. It is a reminder that the reach of a community institution is not measured only by its size, and that some of the most durable threads in American local life are the ones spun by very small groups of committed people.
If you visit
Follett sits in the far northeastern corner of the Texas panhandle, and getting there is part of the experience — the long, level drive across open country is the very landscape the circuit riders once crossed on horseback. Arrive with that image in mind and the marker's opening lines stop being quaint and start feeling real.
What this marker offers is a layered sense of place. You are reading about a congregation that worshiped in a garage, then in a basement for five years, then in a purpose-built sanctuary, then in a mid-century building on the highway. Each move was a step up and a bet on the town's future. Standing where that story landed, you can feel how much patience and hope a small community poured into simply having a place to gather.
This is a stop for travelers who like their history human-scaled. There are no grand battlefields here — just the century-long persistence of ordinary people in a hard, open country, and a church that kept moving until it found its home. It makes a thoughtful pause on a panhandle road trip, a chance to consider how frontier faith and frontier settlement grew up side by side.
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
- · G. L. Hayes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Follett United Methodist Church and Church Bell
Follett, TX
Methodism reached this corner of the Panhandle with circuit rider Grant L. Hayes, who founded churches at Ivanhoe, Oklahoma, in 1902 and at Stillwater, Texas, in 1904. After Follett sprang up on the Santa Fe Railroad in 1917, the two congregations merged there. The Old Ivanhoe church bell, cast in Ohio in 1907, followed the flock — installed in the first church tower in 1924 and carried into the modern church as a link to the pioneer past.
Follett
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Follett started life as "Ivanhoe" just across the line in Oklahoma, then chased the railroad, moving twice before settling on the Texas side in 1917. Renamed for a railroad surveyor, it became a gateway to the Panhandle's wheat-and-cattle "Golden Spread." Farming and ranching carried the town until oil and gas arrived in the 1950s.
Fairmont Cemetery
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At the far northern tip of Texas—closer to six other state capitals than to Austin—Fairmont Cemetery outlasted the towns that made it. Settlers founded Ivanhoe in Oklahoma in 1901, moved it to the railroad as South Ivanhoe, then in 1917 dragged its buildings on skids across the state line to a new Santa Fe stop named Follett. The cemetery, deeded in 1910, holds its first burial the reinterred body of a mother of six killed by lightning, alongside the children of Mexican railroad workers lost to the 1918 influenza epidemic and more than a hundred military veterans.
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