First Disciples of Christ in Texas

Collin McKinney was born in New Jersey on April 17, 1766, and reached Texas by way of Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas Territory, where he was a justice of the peace. He joined Barton Stone's Christian movement in 1817. At seventy he was the oldest member of the 1836 convention and sat on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence; the Handbook says he was given the pen after the signing. Red River County sent him to three congresses. The plaque notes five enslaved people of the family belonged to the Mantua church. He died in 1861.

What the plaque says

First Disciples of Christ in Texas Worshiped in 1831 at McKinney's Landing, where the McKinney family and a small group of neighbors met together for informal services. During the winter of 1841-1842, a traveling preacher from Illinois, G. Gates, organized the congregation into a church. He later wrote, "I remained with the brethren about a week... gathered scattered sheep and constituted a church of 16 members, with fair prospects for more." First leader of the group was Collin McKinney (1766-1861), who had come with his family from Kentucky to Texas in 1831, when Mexico governed the state. The worship services he started were in defiance of the laws of Mexico, which demanded the allegiance of each citizen to the Catholic religion. In 1836, he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Collin County and the city of McKinney bear his name. Between 1844 and 1846, the McKinney families and neighbors moved their congregation to Mantua, near Van Alstyne, where they met in a wooden church with a four-foot wall separating men from women. Five slaves of the family were members of the Mantua group. When the railroad built past Van Alstyne, they moved there and organized the First Christian Church, a direct descendant of the 1831 congregation. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of Regional History — 0.2 mi
  Texarkana's oldest museum, in an 1879 brick building on State Line Avenue, with Caddo pottery, one of Scott Joplin's pianos and a research library of city directories and photographs.
• Atlanta State Park — 18 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.

More markers nearby

• World War I Memorial — steps away
• The French in Texas — steps away
• Texarkana — 0.3 mi
• Scott Joplin — 0.3 mi