Kelsey Mormon Colony
Kelsey, Upshur County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Received church endorsement after Mormon brothers John and Jim Edgar bought a large tract of timber land here in 1898. By end of 1901, Sunday School and church were organized. In Nov. 1902, townsite was laid out by church officials. Post office was located in J. S. Ault store. One-room building served as school and church until 1909, when first church was built (1/10 mi. W). Kelsey Branch was sponsor of Latter Day Saints churches in Enoch, Dallas, Gilmer, Tyler, Longview, Pittsburg, Texarkana, Hooks and Marshall; joined with Enoch, Gilmer churches, in 1958.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1898 two brothers bought timberland in this corner of East Texas and, with church endorsement, planted a Latter-day Saint colony that took shape over the next few years. A Sunday school, a laid-out townsite, a store-based post office, and a one-room building serving as both school and church all followed by the early 1900s, and the first church was raised in 1909. The Kelsey Branch became a hub, sponsoring congregations across a wide swath of East Texas towns before consolidating in 1958.
Why it matters
It marks the reach of Mormon settlement far beyond the Intermountain West, showing how faith communities built and networked frontier towns across the American South.
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Related people
- · John Edgar
- · Jim Edgar
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kelsey School
Enon, TX
In the late 1890s the Edgar brothers and other Latter-day Saint families from Alabama settled along Kelsey Creek, and by 1901 church officials had founded the area's first branch and school. Upshur County created Kelsey School District No. 45 in 1907, and a two-story brick schoolhouse rose in 1911, drawing students as smaller nearby schools closed. Failed crops and the Great Depression thinned the population, and the school closed in 1943.
Rosewood Baptist Church
Rosewood, TX
Founded in 1872 as Double Springs Baptist Church under the Rev. Jacob Zeigler, this East Texas congregation took root in a scattered rural settlement soon after the Civil War. When the Marshall & East Texas Railway arrived and a townsite was platted, the community—and the church—were renamed Rosewood in 1907. Part of the original meeting house survives within the later building, a rare thread of continuity in a region reshaped by the railroad.
Rosewood Cemetery
Gilmer, TX
When the Marshall and East Texas Railroad arrived in 1907, the new town of Rosewood absorbed the older settlements of Double Springs and Essex. That same year the grieving McDonald family donated land for a community cemetery and reinterred their young son here. Maintained for decades by neighbors who took turns digging graves, the cemetery holds granite markers, Woodmen of the World monuments, a carved angel, and memorials to local veterans, including one lost at sea in World War II.
Enon Baptist Church
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Enon Baptist Church was organized in 1848 in the home of charter member M. S. Long, gathering a handful of pioneer families in the East Texas settlement around Gilmer. The congregation first met in a log building and called J. M. Griffin as its first pastor. The present sanctuary was raised in 1934, nearly a century into the church's life.