Site of Wesley College
Greenville, Hunt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded 1905 by North Texas Conference of Methodist Church as the North Texas University Training School (coeducational), in Terrell, Tex. Raised in 1909 to junior college status and renamed. With support from local people, moved to Greenville for the fall session of 1912. Curriculum emphasized liberal arts. Presidents were the Rev. J. J. Morgan; the Rev. S. M. Black; Dr. D. H. Aston; S. E. Green; Dr. G. F. Winfield; Dr. J. E. Roach; Dr. G. B. Jackson; J. E. Blackburn; J. G. Roach. Before closing in 1938, Wesley College enriched the lives of thousands of students. Incise on base: Erected by the Alumni and Ex-students Association.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1905 by the North Texas Conference of the Methodist Church as a coeducational training school in Terrell, the institution rose to junior-college status in 1909 and moved to Greenville in 1912 with local support. Emphasizing the liberal arts and led by a long line of Methodist ministers and educators, Wesley College schooled thousands of students before closing in 1938. Its alumni raised this marker to the campus they remembered.
Why it matters
Small denominational colleges like Wesley carried higher education into rural America long before public universities reached every county.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · J. J. Morgan
- · D. H. Aston
- · G. F. Winfield
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wesley College Administration Building
Greenville, TX
After beginning under the North Texas Conference of the Methodist Church in Terrell, Wesley College moved to Greenville in 1912, and this administration building went up in 1914–15. When fire destroyed it in the 1920s, the church and its lay supporters rebuilt it. Its base bears the tribute of the Alumni and Ex-students Association.
First Presbyterian Church of Greenville
Greenville, TX
Founded in 1880, this Presbyterian congregation met in a courthouse and an opera house before building a home of its own, and it has served Greenville for well over a century. Beyond worship, its members turned to volunteer work, overseas missions, and a distinctive learning center supporting families dealing with learning disabilities. Through those efforts the church became a spiritual, educational, and social anchor for the city.
Library Movement in Greenville
Greenville, TX
At the turn of the 20th century, a group of Greenville women turned a book-lending idea into a lasting civic institution. Beginning in 1897 with a literary circle whose members each donated volumes, they opened a small circulating library that soon outgrew its shelves; a $15,000 pledge from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie underwrote a permanent building that opened in 1904. The library has moved and grown ever since, eventually taking the name of local historian W. Walworth Harrison.
Kavanaugh Methodist Church
Greenville, TX
Kavanaugh Methodist Church began in 1892 as a mission Sunday school and was chartered in 1896, taking its name from Bishop H. H. Kavanaugh. As the congregation outgrew its first four-room brick sanctuary, it built the present classical revival building, dedicated in 1924, with fine brickwork, a raised temple front and fifty art-glass windows. The structure remains a landmark of Greenville's early-20th-century civic and religious life.