Smiley United Methodist Church
Smiley, Gonzales County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Methodists in the Smiley area gathered for informal worship services as early as 1879. In 1885 a congregation, originally known as the Bundick Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, was organized with about six charter families. The Rev. W. H. Killough served as the church's first itinerate pastor. Later, Rancho circuit and other preachers held services at the Smiley church one a month. The congregation first met in the Bundick Schoolhouse, a two-story wooden structure also used for Lone Star Masonic Lodge meetings. The Smiley community moved closer to the railroad after the tracks were laid in 1906, and the Methodist congregation built a one-room sanctuary in the new townsite in 1907. It served the fellowship until the current structure was completed and dedicated in 1948. Members of the Smiley United Methodist Church generally have come from farming and ranching families. Over the years they have provided significant service and leadership to the community and have continued to uphold the ideals and traditions of the founders.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Methodists near Smiley were worshipping informally by 1879 and formally organized in 1885 as the Bundick Society, meeting first in a two-story schoolhouse that doubled as a Masonic lodge hall. When the railroad arrived in 1906, the whole community relocated toward the tracks, and the congregation built a new sanctuary in the fresh townsite the following year. The present church, dedicated in 1948, has long drawn its members from the area's farming and ranching families.
Why it matters
The congregation's moves mirror the way railroads redrew the map of rural Texas, pulling entire towns—churches and all—to new sites along the line.
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Related people
- · Rev. W. H. Killough
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Smiley Lake and Townsite
Smiley, TX
Old Smiley Lake drew settlers in the late 1840s to a natural lake, where ranching—cattle, sheep, and even racing horses—became the first commerce. George W. Colley, considered the community's founder, arrived in 1879 and built a steam-powered cotton gin and sawmill, and the settlement grew to include stores, a saddle factory, a newspaper, a school, and a post office. When the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad laid lines nearby in 1906, the town of Smiley picked up and moved a mile north to meet the rails.
First Baptist Church of Nixon
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This congregation traces its roots to 1869, when Baptist missionaries organized a church in the vanished village of Rancho, a settlement that predated the railroad town of Nixon. When the San Antonio and Gulf Railroad drew the community to a new townsite in 1906–07, the church moved with its people and took the town's name. Through revivals, aid societies, and a long tie to the Alto Frio encampment, it grew into a fixture of small-town life in Gonzales County.
Nixon
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Nixon owes its existence to the railroad and to a shrewd family deal. After rancher John T. Nixon died in 1904, his widow Lucinda and daughter Zeddie enlisted his nephew, attorney Robert F. Nixon, to broker terms with the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad: the family gave land for a townsite, right-of-way, and depot, while the railroad promised to advertise the new town nationwide. Lots first sold in 1906, cotton gins sprang up across the plowed grassland, and settlers poured in from across Texas and beyond—until poultry replaced cotton as the local economy after World War II.
Rancho
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Rancho grew up around Paul Murray's country store, opened in 1849 at the crossing of roads to San Antonio, Gonzales, Seguin, Cuero, Goliad, and Indianola. Murray's fellow Mississippians followed him west for farmland but soon traded the plow for the saddle amid the free-ranging cattle of the open country, and the settlement took its Spanish name as a ranching culture took hold—some of Texas's earliest range branding codes were devised here in 1866. The town thrived with stores, a school, and two churches until 1906, when the railroad bypassed it for nearby Nixon and Rancho's buildings and people drifted away.