Bastrop Methodist Church

The lay preacher was James Gilleland, born in Tennessee in 1798, who had hunted buffalo and traded with Indian nations near the Arkansas settlements before reaching the Brazos by the Old San Antonio Road in 1821. After moves back and forth with the Moore and Rabb families, he settled at Mina in 1828. In the spring of 1835 he gathered the congregation in an unfinished store owned by Jesse Holderman and preached his first sermon from behind a barrel that served as his pulpit. He later served in the Republic's army from July to October 1836.

What the plaque says

Bastrop Methodist Church The nucleus of the present church was formed in 1835 by lay preacher James Gilleland at a time when very few Texans dared to defy Mexican laws outlawing Protestant worship. The first building for this church was erected 1851, one block northwest of here. Cost of land (farm lot) was $250. The present structure was initiated in 1924, renovated in 1953. Sanctuary now contains chancel altar rail, pews, and memorial windows from the 1851 church, thus the old and new are blended here, making this building an historic landmark. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 2.0 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 20 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 24 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 26 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• First National Bank of Bastrop — steps away
• Site of Bastrop Military Institute — steps away
• Baron de Bastrop Monument — 0.3 mi
• Home Town of Texas Confederate Major Joseph D. Sayers — 0.3 mi