Dresden United Methodist Church

Dresden's later life was schools and a college. The Handbook of Texas says a two-story building went up in 1872, a mile northeast of town, to house Dresden College. By 1896 Dresden had about 200 people, a high school, a bank, a general store, a cotton gin and a gristmill, and in 1906 its school had two teachers and fifty-nine students. The post office closed in 1907. The Handbook blames the decision to run the railroad through Corsicana, and says about 127 people lived there in 1939.

What the plaque says

Dresden United Methodist Church The Rev. James E. Ferguson (1824-76), father of Texas Governor James Ferguson, was appointed in 1847 to Richland (later Dresden), the first Methodist circuit in Navarro County. Ethan Melton (1793-1873), the founder of Dresden -- which was "Richland" in his day -- gave land for a school, cemetery, and the church. A log cabin meetinghouse stood here in 1847. A storm razed that structure; fire, another. The present building stands near the original land. This church helped Blooming Grove Mission become a full-fledged church and has also aided other congregations. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 14 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 21 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Hill County Courthouse — 26 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 27 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• Dresden Cemetery — steps away
• Raleigh Cemetery — 1.4 mi
• Campbell-Elrod Cemetery — 4.7 mi
• David Wilson Campbell — 4.7 mi