Millsap United Methodist Church
Millsap, Parker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
MILLSAP UNITED METHODIST CHURCH The Millsap United Methodist church has been a part of this community since 1875, even before Millsap was established in 1880. Services were held in a small church on property donated by G.M. Dodge. The current building was built in 1924 under the supervision of Rev. G.M. Cloud. The church was designed in the shape of the cross based on an early Christian tradition known as cruciform. In 1999, the congregation replaced the window panes with colored glass on the sides and installed stained glass in the front to depict the twelve disciples and the symbol of the united Methodist church. For more than a century, the church has been a beacon of light in the community. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK – 2014
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Methodists were worshiping here in 1875, five years before the town of Millsap even had a name, meeting first in a small church on donated land. The congregation raised its present building in 1924, laid out in the cruciform shape of a cross after early Christian tradition, and later added stained glass depicting the twelve disciples. For well over a century it has served as a steady gathering place for this small Parker County community.
Why it matters
Churches that predate their own towns show how faith communities often came first on the Texas frontier, anchoring settlements before the streets and stores arrived.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Newberry Commuinity
Weatherford, TX
Robert S. Porter, who became newly organized Parker County's first county judge, settled this fertile ground in 1855 among a cluster of pioneer families. A Cumberland Presbyterian congregation took root in members' homes in 1871, and after Jim D. Newberry donated land in 1874 for a church and cemetery, the community itself came to bear the Newberry name. A church, a school, and a tabernacle followed, and the cemetery — its earliest grave a teenager drowned in the Brazos in 1879 — still chronicles the families who built the place.
First Baptist Church of Mineral Wells
Mineral Wells, TX
Born out of an 1882 revival led by traveling preacher William Evander Penn, the 'Texas Evangelist,' the First Baptist Church of Mineral Wells gathered 54 charter members in a booming spa town. Over the decades its pulpit drew famous evangelists like Billy Sunday and 'Gypsy' Smith, and its members planted mission churches across the community. Early pastor George Webb Slaughter had once carried dispatches for Sam Houston during the Texas Revolution.
Battern Cemetery
Weatherford, TX
Henry Hill Battern left Virginia for Parker County around 1860, buying 160 acres that included this one-acre burial ground. His second wife, Sarah Jane, died that same year and is said to be the first laid to rest here. A Civil War veteran who served as the community's unofficial doctor and as a local justice of the peace, Battern was widely respected despite having no formal medical training; the last known burial, his son Francis, came in 1934.
Greenwood Community
Weatherford, TX
Greenwood took shape in the 1880s as a farming community on land sold to T. D. Wythe and W. J. Fain, gathering the institutions that gave frontier neighborhoods their life: a general store run by a transplanted Missouri sheriff, a cemetery, a school built in 1883 that doubled as a place of worship and social gathering, and several churches. Later came a home demonstration club, a community center, and a volunteer fire department. Though it never grew into an incorporated town, its arc from farmland to full community is a familiar chapter of Parker County history.