Trinity Episcopal Church
Albany, Shackelford County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The oldest church building in Albany. Methodists, who organized their church in 1873, built this sanctuary on Schoolhouse Hill in 1889, moved it to Main Street in 1909. Trinity Episcopal Mission, founded 1910, bought structure in 1913, remodeled it (1914), removed it in 1954 to this site (former location, Reynolds Presbyterian Academy) given by Watt Matthews, and added steeple designed by Floyd M. Johnson and Joe Blanton. Recorded Texas Historical Landmark, 1962.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The oldest church building in Albany began as a Methodist sanctuary raised on Schoolhouse Hill in 1889, then moved to Main Street twenty years later. Trinity Episcopal Mission bought the frame structure in 1913 and remodeled it, and in 1954 moved it again to this site — the former grounds of the Reynolds Presbyterian Academy — where a new steeple was added. Its several relocations trace the shifting life of a small West Texas ranching town.
Why it matters
A well-traveled frontier church, it shows how tight-knit communities literally moved their landmarks to keep pace with a growing town.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church of Albany
Albany, TX
Organized in 1873 at the ranch home of J. C. Lynch, this is the oldest congregation in the Northwest Texas Conference and the first church of any denomination in Shackelford County. Circuit-riding preacher Levi Collins came from Weatherford to gather the frontier Methodists. Over the decades the congregation weathered an 1888 tornado and rebuilt repeatedly, culminating in its present sanctuary.
H. C. Jacobs House
Albany, TX
When Henry Carter Jacobs raised this stone house in 1875 from local rock, Albany was barely a dot on the West Texas frontier. A Kentuckian, Civil War veteran, and surveyor, Jacobs did the unglamorous civic work that turns a camp into a town: he platted the streets, gave land for the courthouse and a church, championed a railroad, and even played cornet in the band. His restored home stands as the community's first permanent dwelling.
Ledbetter Picket House
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Georgia-born William Henry Ledbetter came to Texas in 1858 and built a salt works on Hubbard Creek during the Civil War, weathering raids on the exposed western frontier before relocating nearer the protection of Fort Griffin. In the mid-1870s he raised this picket house — walls of upright timbers set in the ground — a construction method common on a frontier short on sawn lumber. Ledbetter served as Shackelford County's first county judge, and the city of Albany moved and restored his home in 1953.
Fort Griffin Fandangle
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