Historical Marker
Elmira Chapel Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Longview, Gregg County · Texas
Erected 1998
The congregation met in the Old Spring Hill School House from about 1891 under Pine Tree's sponsorship. In 1897 Elder James Castleberry gave lumber and the community raised a two-story building, with church services on the first floor and the public school above. On October 28, 1897, the Pine Tree session met at Bun E Rodden's home to divide the two congregations and rename Spring Hill as Elmira Chapel. The Marshall Presbytery received the report in 1898, and the 1899 count was 61 members with property valued at $1,000.
What the plaque says
Elmira Chapel Cumberland Presbyterian Church Pine Tree Cumberland Presbyterian Church began sponsoring Sunday School classes in the Spring Hill Schoolhouse after 1887. The Rev. W. M. Allen began to preach there on Sunday afternoons in 1891. The Rev. J. M. Robinson became the first resident pastor after the division of the two churches. The new congregation was named for Elmira Castleberry, matriarch of a prominent pioneer family. Her sons, James R. and Richard Castleberry, were founding elders of the church. James R. gave 35 acres of land and material for a school/church building in 1897-98. Always active with other denominations and in youth, community and missionary outreach programs, the church continues to serve the area. (1998)
Where it stands
32.56251, -94.79952 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- East Texas Oil Museum — 13 miA Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
- New London Museum and Cenotaph — 24 miA volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
- Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 25 miMaplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
- Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 25 miThe only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.