First Methodist Church of Alvin

The church was organized in 1881, the year the settlement got its post office. Settlement came earlier: the city's history has Elisha and Missouri Thomas building a cedar-log home in 1845 with their children and the people they enslaved. Then the Santa Fe set cattle pens here, and Alvin Morgan, who oversaw them, built the first house in 1879. The place was called Morgan until residents learned another Texas town had the name, and they kept his first name instead. He also kept a store and a saloon, the city says, and made a boxcar the post office.

What the plaque says

First Methodist Church of Alvin A Methodist circuit-riding minister, the Reverend Peter Nicholson, founded the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Alvin in 1881. Early worship services were held in the homes of its members and in the local railroad station. The first church building was constructed in 1886 at the intersection of Johnson and Sidnor streets on town lots deeded by Jesse and Celia Hobbs. A brick church building replaced the original structure in 1926. The women of the church donated a pipe organ to the church the same year. By 1955 it was determined that a larger facility was needed to serve the growing membership. A new brick church was completed in 1961 on this site, featuring a large sanctuary, bell tower, tall church steeple and a white columned entry. The church has sponsored many community activities including scouting, preschool classes, youth activities and scholarships, out-of-town excursions for senior citizens, and several innovative social ministry programs. The First Methodist Church of Alvin continues to serve its membership and the vicinity as it has for more than 100 years. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Space Center Houston — 13 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 21 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Galveston Island State Park — 22 mi
  A cattle ranch willed to the state that now runs the full width of Galveston Island, from two miles of Gulf beach across dunes and prairie to the marshes of West Galveston Bay.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 24 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Alvin — 0.9 mi
• Confederate Cemetery — 1.9 mi
• Runge Park — 7.9 mi
• Liverpool Post Office — 8.1 mi