Oak Grove United Methodist Church
Decatur, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation was organized in 1878 with fourteen charter members by the Reverend Jim Smith and the Reverend E. C. Fullingim. In 1880 the church became part of the Decatur circuit, and the Reverend R. N. Brown served as its first regular pastor. Oak Grove's original sanctuary was constructed ten miles northeast of Decatur but was moved to this site in 1902. The current church building has been in use since 1948. Oak Grove United Methodist, which traditionally held an August revival camp meeting, stands as one of the oldest rural churches in Wise County.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1878 with just fourteen members, this Methodist congregation took root in the farming country northeast of Decatur during the decades when rural Texas was still filling in with settlers. Its first sanctuary was hauled to this site in 1902, and the tradition of an August revival camp meeting long marked the community's calendar. It endures as one of Wise County's oldest rural churches.
Why it matters
Country churches were the social and moral anchors of frontier settlement, and their revival meetings shaped community life across the rural South and West.
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Related people
- · Jim Smith
- · E.C. Fullingim
- · R.N. Brown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Oak Lawn Cemetery
Decatur, TX
Formally established in 1878 when William T. Perry deeded land to Decatur's mayor, this burial ground already held graves reaching back to 1857, evidence of an earlier private cemetery. Managed in turns by the city and a citizens' association, and enlarged repeatedly by gifts of land, it grew to more than forty acres. Today it is the resting place of over 3,700 area residents.
Waggoner Cemetery
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The Reverend Henry Fullingim, a Georgia-born circuit-riding Methodist minister, brought his wife Martha and their seventeen children to northeast Texas in 1849. His son Archibald and son-in-law John Hale—who became Wise County's first sheriff in 1856—were among the county's earliest settlers. The cemetery took its name from John T. and Sarah Waggoner, on whose land Martha Fullingim's 1868 burial became the first recorded here.
Decatur First United Methodist Church
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Organized in 1862 amid the upheaval of the Civil War, this was Decatur's first congregation, with early services held in a vacant store on the town square and in the home of pioneer members who had migrated from Missouri. The fellowship built its first sanctuary in 1881 on land deeded by the county, rebuilt after an 1890s fire, and completed its present brick sanctuary by Easter 1914. Its story tracks the settling of Wise County from wartime hardship into a growing community.
Captain George Stevens
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George W. Stevens came to Wise County in 1855 and became a leader in defending the exposed Texas frontier, serving in a frontier cavalry company and as county sheriff during the turbulent 1860s. In 1874 he was named captain of Company B of the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion, leading some seventy-five men — mostly Wise County neighbors — in the last campaigns against Comanche and Kiowa raiders, and he was severely wounded in a fight at Buffalo Springs. He later helped chase the notorious Sam Bass gang before his death in 1893.