Oak Grove Methodist Church
Aubrey, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized 1880, with worship services and Sunday school held under trees and a brush arbor. Structure built 1881, by A.B. Harris. Six-acre site, including nearby cemetery was donated by the Rev. William E. Bates (1812-83), retired circuit rider and minister. Building costs were supplied through members' and friends' donations, which included a horse. Men of the congregation hauled the lumber from the sawmills in East Texas. This church was the first in the community and has served five generations of residents. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1880 under trees and a brush arbor, this Methodist congregation raised its first building the following year on land donated by a retired circuit-riding minister. Neighbors hauled lumber by wagon from East Texas sawmills, and contributions to the effort even included a horse. As the community's first church, it went on to serve five generations of local families.
Why it matters
Circuit riders and brush-arbor congregations planted the first institutions of frontier settlements, knitting scattered rural families into lasting communities.
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Related people
- · William E. Bates
- · A.B. Harris
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Taylor Family Cemetery
Oak Point, TX
Samuel and Martha Taylor and their grown sons were among the first to settle the area known as Sand Town, arriving from North Carolina in 1859 with three enslaved people—Kijeah, Matilda, and James—and friends the Lunn family. The Taylors prospered raising crops and livestock, and folklore still recalls the "race mare" that son Moses sold to the outlaw Sam Bass. Not every grave is marked, but the surviving stones chronicle the pioneers who opened the Little Elm area to settlement.
Community of Little Elm
Little Elm, TX
Little Elm sits on land from the Peters Colony, an empresario grant the Republic of Texas awarded in 1841 to lure settlers to its northern frontier. Among the first were John and Delilah King, who came from North Carolina in 1844; their son "Kit" King helped organize the area's first mail service and became postmaster when the Little Elm post office opened in 1852. Formed from a cluster of small settlements, the town might have faded—but the creation of Lake Dallas in the 1920s and Lake Lewisville in the 1950s, plus nearby Dallas–Fort Worth, drove it to grow and incorporate in 1966.
Button Memorial United Methodist Church
Denton, TX
When the Rev. William E. Bates gathered a Methodist congregation at Little Elm in 1853, north Texas was still thinly settled prairie, and worshippers made do with a shared meetinghouse before raising their own in 1916. The building's story took an unusual turn in the 1950s, when the rising waters of the new Lewisville Lake forced the whole church to relocate. A 1962 gift from a descendant of the pioneer Button family funded a fresh sanctuary and gave the congregation its present name.
Aubrey First United Methodist Church
Aubrey, TX
In 1858 Dr. George T. Key moved his family from Missouri to Denton County and built log cabins near present-day Aubrey, one of which served as both school and church — the Key School House that cradled one of the county's first Methodist congregations. After years of meeting in the schoolhouse and members' homes, the church accepted a free town lot in 1885 and completed a frame building in 1886. A 1918 tornado leveled that structure, but the congregation rebuilt in brick by 1919, adorning it with Pre-Raphaelite-style stained glass, and continues to serve Aubrey today.