New Summerfield Methodist Church
New Summerfield, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded about 1878 in the Union Chapel community (approximately 1/4 mi. SE of this site), this congregation has been in continuous existence since that time. Built on land donated by Dr. and Mrs. G. F. Fullerton, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was used as a Union church, providing a place of worship for all denominations in the community. Public school classes were held in the building during the week. A new community built up about the turn of the century at this location. Named Summerfield after the pioneer Summers family, it gradually replaced the Union Chapel community. The Methodist church relocated to the new town and became known as Summerfield Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The congregation moved to a new building in 1919. It continued to occupy that facility until 1931, when a new brick structure was completed. When the town was renamed New Summerfield in 1838, the church's name changed once again. After the merger of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren denominations in 1968, it became known as New Summerfield United Methodist Church. A part of Cherokee County history for over a century, the church continues to serve its community. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This East Texas Methodist congregation traces its roots to the Union Chapel community around 1878, when a church rose on land given by the Fullertons and served worshippers of every denomination while doubling as the local schoolhouse through the week. As a new town grew up nearby at the turn of the century, the congregation followed it, taking the Summerfield name and rebuilding in wood, then brick, over the decades that followed. Through mergers and renamings, it has anchored community life in Cherokee County for well over a century.
Why it matters
It captures how a single frontier church often served as the shared spiritual and educational heart of a rural community, binding scattered settlers together long before towns took shape around them.
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Related people
- · Dr. G. F. Fullerton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
New Summerfield Public School
New Summerfield, TX
Schooling in this Cherokee County community began in the 1850s inside the Union Chapel Church, which doubled as a worship house and gathering place. A one-room schoolhouse followed in 1895, and the school's name shifted with the local post office until the town — and the school — became "New Summerfield" to avoid duplicating another Texas Summerfield. Through fires, windstorms, and consolidations, the school remained the community's hub.
Dr. William Reuben Tennison
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Born in a log cabin in rural Cherokee County in 1855, William Reuben Tennison earned a medical degree in St. Louis in 1878 and came straight home to practice out of his father's house. For fifty-eight years he cared for the people of the county, often treating those who could not pay, and continued seeing patients almost until his death in 1936.
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Gallatin's first schoolhouse went up in 1910 and, swelled by high enrollment, grew from three rooms to five within a year. After fire destroyed the building in 1917, a two-story brick school rose on this site in 1918, later gaining a WPA-built stone gymnasium and, after World War II, an agricultural building that doubled as a G.I. School for returning veterans. When the community voted to consolidate with the Rusk district in 1959, the building carried on for years as a Rusk elementary school.