Pilgrim Presbyterian Church
Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The early Gonzales County settlement of Pilgrim was named in honor of Thomas J. Pilgrim, a noted area educator who had received a Republic of Texas land grant here in 1838. In 1881 residents of the pioneer community established a Union Sunday School in a nearby schoolhouse (1.5 miles S). Early members of the congregation represented the Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Quaker faiths. On November 23, 1883, several Union Church members formed this congregation under the direction of the Rev. J. J. Hodges of Wrightsboro. Begun as a Cumberland Presbyterian Fellowship with the congregational name of Pilgrim Lake, it was an early member of the Guadalupe Presbytery of San Antonio and Austin. A sanctuary was built here in 1886 on land donated by Crawford Burnett. Church members were assisted by local residents in construction and furnishing the building, which became the site of many early camp meetings and summer revivals. Despite a declining area population, the Pilgrim Presbyterian Church has remained active and now serves as a focal point of the surrounding rural region and as a reminder of the pioneer settlers whose descendants still live here.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Gonzales County community of Pilgrim took its name from Thomas J. Pilgrim, an educator granted land here by the Republic of Texas in 1838. Decades later, in 1883, members of a nondenominational Union church — representing Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Quaker families — organized this Cumberland Presbyterian congregation, building a sanctuary in 1886 on land donated by Crawford Burnett. Neighbors helped raise and furnish the building, which became a gathering place for camp meetings and summer revivals.
Why it matters
The church shows how scattered frontier settlers of many faiths first worshiped together out of necessity before forming distinct congregations, a common pattern in the peopling of rural nineteenth-century Texas.
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Related people
- · Thomas J. Pilgrim
- · Crawford Burnett
- · Rev. J. J. Hodges
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Community of Pilgrim
Pilgrim, TX
This community carries the name of Thomas J. Pilgrim, a Connecticut-born educator who arrived in Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1828 and opened a school at San Felipe the next year, along with what is remembered as Texas's first Sunday School. An 1838 land grant from the young Republic of Texas brought him to this area, and he settled in nearby Gonzales in 1840. By the 1870s the little trading post here had also gained a rougher reputation as a hideout of the notorious gunman John Wesley Hardin.
Community of Wrightsboro
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Wrightsboro was founded in 1851 by L. C. "Jack" Wright, an Alabama-born marksman and stock raiser, and gained its name from neighbors amused by his free-roaming burro. Wright served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, then returned to ranching and spent a decade as a county commissioner. At its height the town boasted numerous stores and a solid grain- and cotton-based economy, becoming a trade and social center whose Masonic lodge has met, off and on, since 1869.
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Born in England in 1816, George Lord immigrated to Canada and then New Orleans before joining volunteers for the army of the young Republic of Texas in 1837. He fought through the turbulent 1830s and '40s—the Córdova Rebellion, the Somervell Expedition, and the ill-fated Mier Expedition, where he survived the notorious Black Bean lottery and imprisonment at Perote—then served as a Ranger in the Mexican War. In 1849 he joined the Gold Rush to California, marrying Kate Myers along the way, and the couple returned with a fortune in gold to establish a Longhorn ranch in DeWitt County.
Bellevue-Cheapside
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Pioneer settlers, many of English descent, acquired this land in 1876 to establish a community church, school, and burial ground, with a Woodmen of the World lodge nearby. The still-used Bellevue Cemetery served the Cheapside community a mile and a half north, a town named for the famous London street that once held a cotton gin, grist mill, hotel, saloons, and shops. Though Cheapside later declined, the mark of its English founders lingers.