Jonesboro Methodist Church
Jonesboro, Coryell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation traces its history to the late 1860s, when early settlers of Jonesboro met together in a combination church-school Masonic Lodge building for worship services. W. L. Jones donated in 1871, and the congregation was formally organized that year. Their first building, completed in 1871, was replaced by a succession of structures over the years to meet the needs of the membership. Methodist congregations in the nearby communities of Ames, Pancake, and Turnersville have merged with the Jonesboro Church.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Methodist congregation traces its roots to the late 1860s, when Jonesboro's early settlers gathered for worship in a shared church-school-Masonic lodge building. W. L. Jones donated land in 1871, and the congregation formally organized that same year, raising the first of several buildings that would follow over the decades. In time, Methodist congregations from the nearby communities of Ames, Pancake, and Turnersville merged into the Jonesboro church.
Why it matters
It shows how frontier churches anchored scattered rural settlements and gradually knit them together as smaller communities faded.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · W. L. Jones
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ater Cemetery
Gatesville, TX
This burial ground is nearly all that remains of Ater, a small Coryell County community first known as Sardis that took its name from storekeeper and postmaster Joe Ater. Gravestones dating to 1868 mark the resting places of some of the area's earliest settlers, and among the dead lie veterans of conflicts stretching from the War of 1812 through the Korean War. As the little town faded, a cemetery association took up the work of preserving its heritage, and the state recognized the site as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2002.
Weaver Chapel Cemetery
Gatesville, TX
On land the Rev. John Wilson gave to Methodist trustees in 1879, Weaver Chapel Cemetery has gathered the scattered families of the Leon River valley for well over a century. Its graves trace a mosaic of frontier settlement—Swedish rancher Charles Peter Liljeblad, German immigrant August Wilhelm, and the founding Wilson, Weaver, and Pruitt families among the earliest. Civil War, World War I, and World War II veterans lie here, including one man who took part in the planned invasion of Japan.
Turnersville Cemetery
Gatesville, TX
This burial ground served Turnersville—first called Buchanan Springs—a Coryell County community settled before the Civil War that by the 1880s boasted a cotton gin, stores, a school, and three churches. Ranchers, farmers, merchants, physicians, teachers, ministers, and military veterans lie among its curbed plots and grave slabs. A cemetery association formed by 1900, lapsed in the 1930s, and reorganized in 1953 to keep tending the site.
Purmela Baptist Church
Gatesville, TX
This congregation traces its roots to the 1886 organization of Basham Baptist Church in an old schoolhouse near Smith Cemetery. Through mergers and moves, it worshiped at Cravey Crossing, where baptisms were held in the creek, before the congregation voted in 1927 to relocate, dismantling and rebuilding its sanctuary by volunteer labor. Renamed Purmela Baptist Church when the work was finished in 1928, it has served a wide rural area ever since.