Bay City Methodist Church

The cornerstone of the stone-block church of 1908 reads M. E. Church South, a reminder of why Southern Methodists had their own denomination. Methodists divided in 1844 and 1845 over a bishop who held enslaved people, and the Southern church stayed apart until the union of 1939. This congregation grew from the Matagorda circuit of 1839 and became a separate charge from Matagorda in 1908. The lay minister Norman Savage and Levi Arnold carried the faith and visited the sick across the county. The cornerstone also names A. S. Whitehurst as pastor and J. E. Large as architect.

What the plaque says

Bay City Methodist Church The origins of this congregation date to 1870, when circuit-riding ministers visited people living along the Colorado River at Red Bluff. Norman Savage (1826-1879), a church elder, served the small congregation, and the first minister was Thomas W. Rogers. When the town of Bay City was surveyed in 1894 the Methodist congregation relocated and bought one of the first town lots. By 1897 they had built Bay City's first church structure, a frame building with a steeple and bell. The building also served as a Union church for other denominations in the town. The congregation purchased land at Fourth Street and Avenue H in 1904, and the original church building was later sold to the Bay City school system. Services were held in the courthouse and a building on the square until a temporary open-air tabernacle was built. Additional land was acquired in 1906, and a new sanctuary was completed in 1909 during the pastorate of A. S. Whitehurst. The church's fifth building was erected in 1958 and dedicated on March 30 of that year. A part of Bay City and Matagorda county history for over a century, the Bay City Methodist Church continues to serve the community. (1987)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 19 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 24 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.

More markers nearby

• Bay City Library — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Bay City — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Bay City — steps away
• Matagorda, C.S.A. — steps away