HistoricSiteMarkers
Early Republic

Wheatland Methodist Church

Dallas, Dallas County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Founded in 1847, year after Texas joined the United States. Known as the oldest Methodist church west of Trinity River. Built on present site, 1859. Enlarged building, 1912, adding steeple, stained glass windows. RTHL - 1965

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Founded in 1847, just a year after Texas joined the United States, Wheatland Methodist Church claims to be the oldest Methodist congregation west of the Trinity River. The congregation built on this site in 1859 and later enlarged the building in 1912, adding a steeple and stained glass windows. Its long life spans the transformation of the surrounding country from open frontier to greater Dallas.

Why it matters

As a pioneering Methodist congregation in early statehood Texas, it marks the frontier religion that took root almost as soon as the young state joined the Union.

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Nearby & related markers

Wheatland Cemetery

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Wheatland Cemetery grew out of land donated in the mid-1800s by Ohio-born farmers Tom Branson and H.K. Brotherton, and it became intertwined with the local Methodist congregation of Wesley Chapel, which moved to the renamed community of Wheatland in 1864. Formally established in 1872, the grounds hold earlier burials, some reinterred from the chapel's original yard, along with pioneers, community leaders, and veterans reaching back to the Mexican-American War. Its fraternal gravestones and curbing, and graves of victims of flu, malaria, and diphtheria epidemics, record the joys and hardships of an early Dallas-area farming community.

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