Salado United Methodist Church
Salado, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1854, the Rev. Thomas Gilmore, a Methodist circuit rider, led a revival at Pecan Grove on the north side of Salado Creek. He organized a Methodist church and a Union Sunday school in a small frame building. During the next decades, the congregation met in a brush arbor and at Salado College before constructing a Carpenter Gothic sanctuary in 1890 on the corners of Stagecoach and Church streets. Initially served by pastors on the Belton circuit of the Methodist church, the congregation became part of the Salado circuit, or charge, which included churches in Bartlett, Bell Plains and Prairie Dell. At the turn of the 20th century, the Salado circuit remained active, with an Epworth League for the church youth and a missionary, Emma Stone (Poteet) Pilley, serving overseas in Japan and China. Members also started a church library. By 1910, the circuit consisted of the Salado, Bell Plains and Prairie Dell congregations, which all continued to thrive. Each included programs such as vacation bible school and the Women's Society of Christian Service, as well as active youth and Sunday school programs. The Bell Plains church consolidated with the Salado church in 1940, and in 1951, the Prairie Dell members did the same, moving their long-time sanctuary to Salado to serve as a fellowship hall for their new congregation. With a strong historic foundation of three area congregations, Salado United Methodist Church has continued to grow and thrive, contributing to its community through various programs and services. Due to area development, the church moved to this site in 2005, incorporating its 1890 sanctuary within new facilities. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The roots of Salado United Methodist Church reach back to an 1854 revival led by circuit rider the Rev. Thomas Gilmore on Salado Creek, where he organized a Methodist congregation and a Union Sunday school. Worshiping first in a brush arbor and at Salado College, members built a Carpenter Gothic sanctuary in 1890 and, over the following century, absorbed neighboring rural congregations at Bell Plains and Prairie Dell. The church sent one of its own, Emma Stone Pilley, as a missionary to Japan and China, and preserved its 1890 sanctuary within new facilities when it moved in 2005.
Why it matters
Its story traces the frontier Methodist circuit system that planted churches, schools, and women's mission work across rural nineteenth-century Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Rev. Thomas Gilmore
- · Emma Stone (Poteet) Pilley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Louisa Adeline (Addie) Barton
Salado, TX
Addie Barton (1858-1921) moved to Salado as a girl so she could attend Salado College, and after graduating she became a teacher. Answering a call to mission work in 1883, she was commissioned by her home Baptist church and went to Saltillo, Mexico, teaching at the Madero Institute and other girls' schools. The upheavals of the Mexican Revolution forced her home in 1910, where she served refugees and the needy until her death.
Kate Crawford and Zachary Clay Taylor
Salado, TX
Kate Crawford, a Salado schoolteacher, married pastor Zachary Clay Taylor on Christmas Day 1881, and their church commissioned them that same day as missionaries to Brazil. Arriving in 1882, they helped organize a Portuguese-speaking Baptist congregation, with Kate translating evangelistic writings into Portuguese until her death from cancer in 1894. Zachary remained in Brazil until 1909, returning to Texas only to drown in the great 1919 hurricane that devastated Corpus Christi.
Alice Gray Hamblen
Salado, TX
Born in Mississippi in 1846, Alice Gray Hamblen moved with her husband to Salado in 1868 and threw herself into the life of Salado College, the local private school. A devoted champion of education, she boarded relatives' children so they could attend. When the old college building was condemned in 1924, she offered the Hamblen family homestead as the site for the new Salado public school.
Woman's Study Club of Holland
Holland, TX
On January 14, 1914, a small group of Holland women organized a study club for their own cultural advancement, part of the nationwide women's club movement of the Progressive Era. They quickly turned outward, funding public school programs and civic projects — including a 1939 campaign that saved Holland's Opera House for use as a civic center.