Pearl Church of Christ
Pearl, Coryell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Worship services were first held in the Bee House community about 1878, then in the first Pearl schoolhouse on Cowhouse Creek. This church was organized in October 1895. The members bought three acres of land, built a sanctuary, and added to it in 1890. A tabernacle, still in use today, was erected in 1904 to house successful 10-day to 2-week summer revival meetings that included services from sunrise to late evening. The church supports community outreach programs and continues to serve its membership, as it has for more than 100 years. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Worship in this corner of Coryell County began in the Bee House community around 1878 and moved to the first Pearl schoolhouse on Cowhouse Creek before the Church of Christ was organized in 1895. Members bought land, raised a sanctuary, and in 1904 built a tabernacle for the marathon summer revivals — days-long meetings running from sunrise to late evening — that it still hosts. More than a century on, the church continues to serve its rural membership.
Why it matters
The brush-arbor and tabernacle revival was a defining rhythm of rural Southern religious life, and this surviving tabernacle keeps that tradition tangible.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pearl Baptist Church
Pearl, TX
Organized in 1884 under pioneer missionary the Rev. E. Berry, this congregation began four miles west as the Bee House Missionary Baptist Church, worshiping in a Masonic hall that also served as the community schoolhouse. When it relocated in 1889 to land sold by rancher Charles T. Karnes, it took the name Mt. Olive, and the settlement once called Wayback was later renamed Pearl. A tabernacle built about 1908 on the line between the Baptist and Methodist properties long hosted revivals and summer brush-arbor meetings.
Pearl Cemetery
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In the rolling country of Coryell County, the community first called Wayback—a clerical mangling of "Swayback"—took the softer name Pearl in 1890 for a postmaster's young cousin. Its cemetery grew out of grief and generosity when the Keeton family set aside land after burying fourteen-year-old Lillian in 1896, later deeding acreage for public graves. The ground holds pioneers, victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic including a doctor who died treating the sick, and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.
John Paney Bertrand
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The son of French immigrants who reached Texas before the Revolution, John Bertrand grew up in Brazoria County and ran a mercantile business in Washington County before leaving to serve in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War he married, moved to Coryell County in 1875, and settled 312 acres, raising eight children in a log cabin while he farmed and ran livestock. His story mirrors the westward push of many Texans rebuilding their lives on the land after the war.
Slater Cemetery
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The Slater Cemetery is nearly all that survives of a once-thriving farming and ranching community that took root in Coryell County in the late 1800s. By the early 1900s Slater supported two churches, a post office, a school, and businesses. In 1907 James and Ellen Martin donated land for a free burial ground, and their son Curry, buried that year, lies in its oldest marked grave.