First Christian Church of Lancaster

Roderick Rawlins came to Lancaster at sixty-eight with a long record behind him. Born near Bunker Hill in 1776, he served in the War of 1812, sat in the Indiana legislature and helped lay out what became Bloomington. A Restoration Movement history says Barton Stone's preaching led to his baptism in Illinois. He reached Ten Mile Creek on January 2, 1845. Eighteen months later fourteen people signed a covenant to be a church "taking the Scripture alone" as their rule. Records for 1850 to 1880 do not survive, and the plaque says the church reorganized in 1880.

What the plaque says

First Christian Church of Lancaster (Disciples of Christ) On July 5, 1846, Roderick Rawlins (1776 - 1848) and 13 settlers began this fellowship. They met in homes and a one-room log schoolhouse. For years ordained members and itinerant preachers led services. After disruptions of the Civil War, the membership reorganized in 1880. The first church house was built in 1887 at the corner of Main and Henry. It burned in 1918 with other structures on the Square and was replaced the next year. In 1957 this site was acquired; the building was erected in 1960. This is one of the oldest Christian congregations in continuous service in the state. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 12 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 13 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 13 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.
• Fair Park — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Confederate Arms Factory — 0.6 mi
• Town of Lancaster — 0.7 mi
• Former Site of Head House — 0.7 mi
• Edgewood Cemetery — 1.3 mi