Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Ovilla, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first organized church in Ellis county, the Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian Church congregation was chartered with twenty members on July 25, 1847, two years before the formation of the county. The church was begun under the leadership of the Rev. Finis E. King, a pioneer area minister, with the assistance of the Rev. J.C. Provine of Paris in Lamar County. Worship services were first conducted under a brush arbor and later in a cedar log tabernacle constructed by Matt McElroy and his eight sons. In 1872, during the pastorate of the Rev. D.G. Molloy, the present frame sanctuary was completed. J.P. Laughlin built the structure using lumber from Cherokee County in East Texas. Ministers here have included such prominent early Presbyterian preachers as the Rev. King, pastor from the church's organization until his death in 1859, and the Rev. E.M. White, who was instrumental in the formation of the several Ellis County churches. Since the earliest days of settlement, the Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian congregation has led in the development of Ovilla and the surrounding area.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered on July 25, 1847—two years before Ellis County itself existed—Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian was the county's first organized church. Early worshipers met under a brush arbor and then a cedar log tabernacle built by Matt McElroy and his eight sons. In 1872 the congregation completed the frame sanctuary that still stands, framed with lumber hauled from East Texas.
Why it matters
As the first church in the county, Shiloh anchored frontier settlement in North Texas and shows how faith communities often preceded formal government on the land.
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Related people
- · Finis E. King
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Shiloh Cemetery
Ovilla, TX
Burials at Shiloh began with the Peters Colony pioneers who founded Ovilla in 1844, the oldest marked grave being that of Mary C. Patton, who died in 1851. The Berry family and the Rev. Finis E. King deeded land for the Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian church and its cemetery, whose stones record the pastors who served the congregation, two nineteenth-century Ovilla postmasters, and veterans from the Civil War through Korea. It is a chronicle of one of North Texas's earliest settlements.
Ovilla Cemetery
Ovilla, TX
The Ovilla community grew from Peters Colony families who settled here in 1844, and in 1886 Benjamin and Erixna McFarlin deeded four acres to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a burial ground. The earliest marked grave, from 1884, belongs to Rebecca Summers McElroy, and more than 440 people now rest here, among them early settlers and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam. The cemetery reads as a roll call of the community's founders.
Ovilla
Ovilla, TX
One of Ellis County's oldest communities, Ovilla began in 1844 as a fortified settlement on upper Red Oak Creek, adding a Presbyterian church in 1847 and its first schoolhouse in 1849. By 1900 it boasted a post office, banks, stores, and a cotton gin, serving as a marketing hub for area farmers. Bypassed by the railroads and scarred by fires in 1918 and 1926, the town faded—until suburban growth revived it in later years.
First Baptist Church of Ovilla
Ovilla, TX
Residents around Ovilla organized a Baptist church in September 1903, worshiping at first in a wooden tabernacle shared with other congregations near Red Oak Creek. The Rev. Bob Burleson became the first full-time pastor in 1922, and in 1936 the members finally built a sanctuary of their own on this site. More than a century on, the congregation still anchors the community through worship and outreach.