First Christian Church of Garland

The founding preacher was a farmer. William Benjamin Cole met his wife Amanda Sweet in Chicago, where he roomed with her father, a Christian Church minister. They settled on a farm near Mesquite, and Cole helped organize the Christian Church of Scyene in 1870. A self-educated, part-time pastor, he served the Duck Creek congregation from the 1870s. In 1876 he performed the marriage of Dr. Kelly Embree, the namesake of Embree, and Mary Erwin. Cole died on February 11, 1879, aged forty-eight, after which R. M. Gano and W. H. Walker preached to the congregation.

What the plaque says

First Christian Church of Garland As the township of Duck Creek began to take shape in 1858, four denominations shared religious services in the Duck Creek schoolhouse. Area development was delayed by the onset of the Civil War, but by the 1870s the town was recovering. The Rev. W. B. Cole organized First Christian Church in 1875 with 21 charter members. They met in the schoolhouse for several years. In 1884, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad missed Duck Creek by one mile. A new township called Embree sprang up beside the railroad line. In 1885, the Rev. W. B. Cole's son, Charles l. Cole, became the growing congregation's first full-time minister; the following year, church members erected their own house of worship. In 1888 the congregation purchased the land on this site and moved the church building here. The two townships incorporated in 1891 to become Garland. The congregation grew with the area. Between 1922 and 1924 a new brick building was erected. The church was remodeled and additions were made as needed. The congregation persevered despite the difficulties of the Depression era. From 1954 to 1964 the church established two new congregations, Monica Park and Western Heights Christian churches. The membership of the First Christian Church of Garland reached 1000 in the year 2000. At the dawn of the 21st century, the First Christian Church serves its congregation and the wider community with such outreach ministries as counseling services and offering free meeting space and financial aid to many nonprofit organizations. The First Christian Church of Garland continues in the traditions of its founders. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 11 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 11 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 12 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 13 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• First Methodist Church of Garland — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Garland — steps away
• Garland — steps away
• Garland Lodge No. 441, A.F. & A.M. — 0.6 mi