Red Bayou Methodist Church
New Boston vicinity, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This rural congregation constructed its first church building on land donated by Mr. & Mrs. J. M. C. Yates in 1861. The log building, located at the present-day site of Red Bayou Cemetery, also served as a school. In its early years the church held camp meetings on a regular basis; families arrived in wagons, buggies, and on horseback to camp together under brush arbors for three to four weeks at a time. Worship services were conducted by circuit-riding preachers, among whom were the Rev. Jester White, the Rev. McDougle, and the Rev. Charles Edgar Lamb. In 1882 the church established a mission church known as Tapp Memorial in the nearby community of New Boston. Sometime prior to 1912 a new frame church building was built at the site of the original structure. The new church building also served as a schoolhouse until 1922. In 1938 the frame building was relocated to this site due to expansion of the Red Bayou Cemetery. Sunday School classrooms were added to the building in 1948 and again in 1952. In 1953 the congregation acquired a parsonage and called its first full-time pastor. A fellowship hall was added in 1987. Red Bayou United Methodist Church continues to serve the community with various outreach programs. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This rural Methodist congregation built its first log church—which doubled as a schoolhouse—on donated land in 1861. In its early years families arrived by wagon and horseback for weeks-long camp meetings under brush arbors, served by circuit-riding preachers. Over the following decades the church replaced its building, established a mission church, added classrooms, and gained its first full-time pastor, continuing to serve the Bowie County community into modern times.
Why it matters
It preserves the frontier tradition of camp meetings, circuit riders, and church-schools that anchored community life across rural 19th-century Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church
New Boston vicinity, TX
Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church has served the Black community north of New Boston since it was organized in February 1872 by the Rev. Forrest Hooks and fourteen charter members, gathering first in a log cabin on land owned by Abram Ellis, a former slave of Texas patriot Richard Ellis. The present building was raised in 1912–13 on land bought from Richard Ellis's descendants, and a school opened here as early as 1903, later housed in its own building until it consolidated with the New Boston district. Though its membership peaked in the 1920s, the small congregation still gathers for worship on the fourth Sunday of each month, as it has since its earliest days.
Arkadelphia Rosenwald School
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First United Methodist Church of DeKalb
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Red Lick Methodist Church
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Founded by oral tradition in 1885, this rural Methodist congregation has gathered on land donated by the Bonner family since the 1890s. In its early years the community shared a single building that served at once as church, school, and lodge, with women and men seated on opposite sides and baptisms performed by immersion in a nearby pond. Renamed the Red Lick United Methodist Church in 1968, it remains a fixture of local religious life.