Sugar Land First United Methodist Church
Sugar Land, Fort Bend County, Texas
Marker Inscription
METHODIST SERVICES IN SUGAR LAND DATE BACK TO AS EARLY AS 1910, WHEN REV. C.C. MILLER ORGANIZED AN INFORMAL CHURCH. THERE WAS NO FULL-TIME MINISTER, AND ACTIVITIES SUCH AS EVANGELICAL WORSHIP SERVICES, BIBLE STUDY AND HYMN SINGING WERE INTERMITTENT. IN 1918, THE IMPERIAL SUGAR COMPANY DONATED CHURCH PARK, A PARCEL OF LAND BETWEEN MAIN AND WOOD STREETS, FOR THE METHODIST, PRESBYTERIAN, BAPTIST AND CATHOLIC CONGREGATIONS TO BUILD CHURCHES. IN AUGUST 1919, MISSIONARY MINISTER REV. C.E. CLARK CAME TO OFFICIALLY ORGANIZE THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH. THE TRUSTEES IN 1919 WERE C.J. BERNEY, MRS. C.A. DIERKS, CHARLES VALLENGA, MRS. W.M. BROOKS, E.S. REPP AND C.N. FRANKS. REV. T.W. ST. JOHN SERVED AS THE FIRST APPOINTED MINISTER. THE FIRST CHURCH BUILDING WAS A ONE-STORY FRAME STRUCTURE WITH STAINED GLASS WINDOWS, INCLUDING “JESUS PRAYING IN THE GARDEN,” WHICH HAS BEEN INSTALLED IN SUBSEQUENT SANCTUARIES AND IN THE PRAYER CHAPEL OF THE PRESENT CAMPUS. EARLY MINISTRIES INCLUDED A CHURCH CHOIR, EASTER CANTATAS, WOMEN’S METHODIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY (LATER UNITED METHODIST WOMEN), YOUTH GROUPS, AND LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BENEVOLENT CAUSES. INCREASING MEMBERSHIP NECESSITATED RELOCATION, AND IN 1955, THE CONGREGATION PURCHASED THREE ACRES ON ELDRIDGE ROAD AND BUILT A MODERN CHURCH AND HALL. THE CHURCH BOUGHT ADDITIONAL ACREAGE IN THE 1960s AND COMPLETED A NEW BRICK SANCTUARY IN 1977. THE PRESENT 936-SEAT BRICK SANCTUARY WAS COMPLETED IN 1999. ADDITIONAL FACILITIES HAVE INCLUDED THE SCHOOL FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, YOUTH CENTER (FORMER LAURA ELDRIDGE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL), EDUCATION CENTER AND PERRY ABERNATHY RECREATION CENTER. THROUGH THE 20TH CENTURY AND INTO THE 21ST, FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH HAS MINISTERED TO THE SPIRITUAL AND PRACTICAL NEEDS OF ITS NEIGHBORS AND THE WORLD. (2019)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Methodist worship began informally in Sugar Land around 1910, and in 1918 the Imperial Sugar Company donated Church Park so the town's Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Catholic congregations could each build a house of worship. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was formally organized here in 1919, its first frame sanctuary graced by a stained-glass "Jesus Praying in the Garden" window that has been carried into every sanctuary since. As membership grew, the congregation moved and rebuilt across the decades, culminating in a 936-seat brick sanctuary in 1999. The church's long life mirrors the growth of a sugar company town into a modern Houston-area city.
Why it matters
The church illustrates how company-town paternalism and religious life intertwined in early industrial Texas, with Imperial Sugar itself providing the land for worship. Its century of expansion tracks Sugar Land's transformation from a mill town into a thriving suburb.
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Related people
- · Rev. C.E. Clark
- · Rev. T.W. St. John
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sugar Land Auditorium
Sugar Land, TX
Built in 1917 and designed in the Mission Revival style by Imperial Sugar Company engineer M. R. Wood, this auditorium anchored a crescent-shaped, eleven-building school complex and is the oldest public building still in use in Sugar Land. Over the decades it hosted films, stage shows, rooftop socials, and graduations, and once held the school superintendent's office and a janitor's apartment. It became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1992.
The Sugar Land Refinery
Sugar Land, TX
Sugar cane came to Fort Bend County with Stephen F. Austin's colonists in the 1820s, and by the 1840s the Williams brothers were boiling it in open kettles on Oakland Plantation. Successive owners — Kyle and Terry, then Cunningham after the Civil War, and finally Kempner and Eldridge in 1907 — grew a horse-powered mill into the Imperial Sugar Company, which named the town Sugar Land. One early partner, Benjamin Terry, raised the Confederate cavalry unit Terry's Texas Rangers and died in the war.
Sugar Land
Sugar Land, TX
Founded in 1853 and named for the sugar mill and plantation that B. F. Terry and W. J. Kyle bought with fortunes made in the California Gold Rush, Sugar Land grew into the home of Texas's only cane sugar refinery. Its founders raised Terry's Texas Rangers, one of the Confederacy's famed cavalry units, at the start of the Civil War. In later years the surrounding land became known for its prison farms.
Stafford Plantation
Sugar Land, TX
Tennessean William Joseph Stafford brought his family here in 1822 as members of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300," the first Anglo colonists in Mexican Texas, and built a plantation with a sugar mill and cotton gin known as Stafford's Point. Its high-molasses sugar prospered even in lean cotton years, until Mexican troops burned the buildings during the Texas Revolution. The family rebuilt, and the settlement that grew around the plantation survives today as the city of Stafford; this site is believed to be its early cemetery.