Taylor's Chapel Congregational Methodist Church
Comanche, Comanche County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Taylor's Chapel Congregational Methodist Church Under a brush arbor in 1901, Rev. J.V. Havner, a Methodist circuit preacher, led area residents as they organized a Methodist congregation. In January 1902, Hood Taylor deeded approximately two acres to the church, which thereafter became known as Taylor's Chapel. Although the earliest church records have been lost, those involved in the congregation during its formative years included the Robertson, Bingham, Chapman, Vaughn and Power families. Jim Power, Jim Robertson and Sam Vineyard were important early leaders. In 1914, Rev. Hutchins S. Anglin, known as the "walking preacher," was elected pastor of the church, a position he held until 1920. Rev. Brady Claud "B.C." Slate served in the 1920s, and Rev. William Sineon "Will" Clark served in the 1930s and 1940s. In combined years of service, Rev. Gloyd Horton and Rev. J.l. Jones pastored more than 30 years, from 1949 until 1981. Although construction on the congregation's first church house began in January 1902, members have often held services outside, under brush arbors and tabernacles, since their earliest meeting in 1901. Their first sanctuary served until 1948, when a new building was dedicated. Since that time, membership has fluctuated, with rising numbers at the church's centennial anniversary in 2001. The Taylor's Chapel Congregational Methodist Church, a part of the Soda Springs Community, continues to serve as a focal point and place of worship for the surrounding rural area. (2003)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1901 a Methodist circuit preacher gathered area families under a brush arbor near Soda Springs, and the next year Hood Taylor deeded land that gave the congregation its name. For generations the church anchored a scattered rural community, often worshipping outdoors under arbors and tabernacles even after its first sanctuary rose in 1902. A handful of long-serving pastors, two of them together spanning more than thirty years, carried it into its second century.
Why it matters
It shows how frontier-descended rural communities organized their common life around a country church, a pattern repeated across the American countryside.
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Related people
- · Hood Taylor
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Taylor's Chapel (Concord) Cemetery
Comanche vicinity, TX
This burial ground began beside the Concord Primitive Baptist Church, organized before 1881 in the pioneer country north of Comanche, with its earliest marked grave that of F. M. Warren in that same year. Warren's father, Posey W. Warren, was a deacon and likely founder of the church, and the surrounding land belonged to large settler families like the Browns, one of whom was a Confederate veteran. When a Methodist congregation formed here in 1901 on land from Alabama native James "Hood" Taylor, the site took on the name Taylor's Chapel Cemetery.
Bibb Community
Sidney, TX
Bibb sprang up when Anglo cotton farmers settled western Comanche County in the 1870s, and by 1891 seven men platted a proper town of 44 lots. At its height in the 1890s it bustled with cotton gins, general stores, a school, four churches, a broom factory, and Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges. As roads improved and rail bypassed it, the population drained away; today no trace of Bibb remains on the ground.
Cox Cemetery
Sidney vicinity, TX
William Driscol Cox brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1872 and settled a 300-acre ranch here, teaching the first school in nearby Sidney and serving as Comanche County sheriff. The cemetery began with the 1876 burial of his infant daughter Mary Jane, and in 1886 Cox donated the ground to a Methodist mission as a public burial place. Generations of the Cox family and their kin have tended it ever since.
Pendergrass Cemetery
Sidney vicinity, TX
William and Emaline Pendergrass left Tennessee for Texas in 1849 and put down permanent roots in frontier Comanche County by 1873. A community builder, William helped found churches and a school, and in 1883 gave a plot of his land to bury a stranger found nearby—the first grave in what became the family cemetery. He deeded the acre to the community in 1888, and generations of descendants now rest among its more than five hundred graves.