Jourdanton United Methodist Church
Jourdanton, Atascosa County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Methodist church in Jourdanton formally organized in 1909, the same year that the City of Jourdanton was founded. The church began as the Jourdanton Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and was a member of the Uvalde District in the West Texas Conference. Founding members included Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Billingsley, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, Mr. and Mrs. Easterling, The W. H. Purgason family, the Carter family, Mr. and Mrs. B. B. Daughtrey, the Richardson family, and Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Ernst. During 1909, Rev. J. W. Shoemaker, the congregation's first pastor, served a circuit consisting of churches in Pleasanton, Jourdanton, Campbellton and Fairview. Other early pastors included the Rev. W. N. Carl and the Rev. J. N. Rentfro. Services originally took place in a tent. In 1910, church trustees B. B. Daughtrey, James A. Waltom and C. B. Myers purchased property at the corner of Elm Avenue and Brown Street from E. M. and May Tom, and a frame building was constructed on the site. In 1941, the congregation razed the original structure and built a new one at the same location. Property was later purchased at the corner of Chestnut and Campbell, and the 1941 sanctuary was moved to the new site in 1957. The sanctuary was later sold and removed from the property, and the present sanctuary was constructed in 1964. The Jourdanton Methodist Church Ladies Aid Society held its first meeting on March 3, 1910. Additional organizations later founded within the church included the Women's Society of Christian Service, the Wesleyan Service Guild, Epworth League, the United Methodist Women, the United Methodist Men and Methodist Youth Fellowship. (2009)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the railroad town of Jourdanton took shape in 1909, its Methodist congregation organized the same year, worshiping first in a tent before trustees bought a corner lot and raised a frame church in 1910. As the community grew, the congregation rebuilt in 1941, moved and replaced its sanctuary over the following decades, and spun off a lively network of women's, men's and youth societies. The present sanctuary dates to 1964.
Why it matters
The church's founding alongside its town shows how faith congregations knit together the new South Texas railroad communities of the early twentieth century.
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Related people
- · J. W. Shoemaker
- · B. B. Daughtrey
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Jourdanton
Jourdanton, TX
First Baptist organized in October 1909, just a month after the town of Jourdanton itself was founded, when seven residents gathered under a visiting minister and met in the community schoolhouse. Within a year they built a frame church, and in 1911 the women formed a missionary union that funded state and foreign missions and orphan care. New sanctuaries in 1946 and 1977 and a large worship center in 2003 tracked the congregation's steady growth.
Jourdan Campbell
Jourdanton, TX
Jourdan Campbell, son of Campbellton founder John Campbell, grew up in Atascosa County and became a county commissioner in the 1890s. In 1907 he and Col. T. H. Zanderson bought the 33,760-acre Tobey Ranch, part of which became the town of Jourdanton, where Campbell served as bank vice president and lobbied hard for a railroad. His efforts helped make Jourdanton the county seat in 1910 and pushed a highway project linking the county's towns.
Jourdanton
Jourdanton, TX
In 1909 two entrepreneurs—merchant Jourdan Campbell and Danish wool-and-mohair man Theodore Zanderson—laid out a town on their ranch and persuaded a land speculator to bring the railroad through; the first train arrived that September. Jourdanton quickly gained utilities, a bank, a newspaper and churches, and in 1910 wrested the county seat from Pleasanton. Oil and gas discoveries in the 1940s and later lignite mining kept the town growing well after the railroads stopped running.
Pleasanton City Cemetery
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The Pleasanton City Cemetery began in 1865 as a family plot when Jonathan and Mary Doak buried their three-year-old son on the western edge of town, and friends and neighbors soon began using the ground as well. The many infant and child graves in its oldest section speak to the harshness of frontier life, while later burials include a Mexican War veteran who twice served as San Antonio's mayor and Graves Peeler, credited with helping save the Longhorn breed in the 1930s. Once called the Doak or Sandhill Cemetery, it remains a record of the community's founding generations.