Brock Methodist Church

Brock grew up around one man's carpentry. John Henry Brock bought land here in 1871, and the Handbook of Texas calls him a carpenter and cabinetmaker who built many of the early buildings. In 1880 he and Willie Brannon built a gin and mill at nearby Grissom Springs. A post office named for him opened in 1888, and by 1892 the town had a blacksmith shop, a grocery, a school and a grist mill. The Olive Branch Collegiate Institute followed. The post office closed in 1919, and the Handbook reports eighty residents in 2000.

What the plaque says

Brock Methodist Church In 1876 James and Sarah Maddux moved their family from Arkansas to Texas. They purchased land here and settled in this community originally named Olive Branch. In 1880 James and Sarah Maddux donated land for a school, cemetery and churches. The Methodist Church was established in 1882 with the Maddux family among the charter members. They first met in the brush arbor and later met in a log building and in a tabernacle, sharing meeting facilities with the Baptist Church. Worship services were conducted by visiting preachers until 1892 when the Rev. E.J. Maxwell became pastor of the church. In 1908 the cornerstone for a church building was laid and a sanctuary was constructed. By 1951 the congregation was declining. A new pastor and a few dedicated members began to rebuild the church. Later facilities were added and the sanctuary was refurbished. The congregation grew steadily and became active in domestic and foreign missionary activities and in many community outreach programs. Brock United Methodist Church provides traditional programs for its members and has been an integral part of the community for more than a century. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chandor Gardens — 9.5 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 11 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 18 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Acton State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.

More markers nearby

• Original Plant of Acme Brick Company — 4.3 mi
• Poe Prairie — 4.4 mi
• Grace First Presbyterian Church — 8.9 mi
• Jack Llewellyn Knight — 9.7 mi