United Methodist Church of Wortham
Wortham, Freestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Congregation organized in 1867 by the Rev. J. Hill Bounds, an immigrant from Mississippi who brought his family to Texas by ox-wagon in 1865. At first this church, as well as others in Wortham, shared a two-story building with the local Masonic Lodge. T. A. Bounds (son of J. Hill Bounds) donated this present, centrally located site. Bishop Kenneth Copeland (born 1912) of the Texas Conference joined this church as a boy, and at 17 held a revival here. A 1930s revival leader was Bishop John C. Broomfield. Present edifice was built 1925.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1867 by the Rev. J. Hill Bounds, a Mississippi minister who had brought his family to Texas by ox-wagon two years earlier, this Methodist congregation first shared a two-story building with the local Masonic Lodge. His son T. A. Bounds later donated the central site where the present sanctuary rose in 1925. The church nurtured future bishop Kenneth Copeland, who led a revival here at seventeen.
Why it matters
Frontier churches like this one anchored newly settled Texas communities, doubling as gathering places and schools as families put down roots after the Civil War.
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Related people
- · J. Hill Bounds
- · T. A. Bounds
- · Kenneth Copeland
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Rev. G. W. Bounds
Wortham, TX
Born in Mississippi in 1854, G. W. Bounds came to Texas with his family in 1864 and preached his first sermon in 1880, gaining ordination a decade later. He was a charter member who helped organize the Wortham Methodist Church and was instrumental in founding congregations across the surrounding country. Beloved for his good works, he served the region's faithful until his death in 1944.
Old Judge Allegre House
Wortham, TX
Warren Allegre, who came to Wortham in 1869 and ran a nearby drugstore, built this Victorian house about 1895 while also giving music lessons, dispensing legal advice, and serving as justice of the peace and mayor. The home features handmade brick foundations and fireplaces, hand-carved woodwork, and two octagonal rooms, and was restored in 1968. It reflects the settled, small-town prosperity of Freestone County at the turn of the century.
Mrs. Lucy Haggard Longbotham
Wortham, TX
Lucy Haggard Longbotham (1793–1873) was born in the raw territory south of the Ohio River that became Tennessee, one of nine children of a Virginia-born Baptist minister. She moved to the Alabama frontier around 1814, married in 1820, and eventually came to Texas — living, the marker notes, under nine different territorial, national, and state flags in a single lifetime, and raising nine children of her own.
Robert B. Longbotham
Wortham, TX
Robert B. Longbotham (1797–1883) was born in Sunderland, England, and crossed the Atlantic as a carpenter's apprentice aboard ship. After marrying in Alabama, he came to Texas in 1832, secured a land grant from Mexico, and fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution and in Indian conflicts of 1839. He settled at this place in 1848, and the town bore his name until its post office was renamed Wortham in 1874.