First Methodist Church of Beeville

Two things the plaque omits are a youth center and the lumber. When the church was organized in 1861, Rev. Berry Merchant came as supply pastor. The first sanctuary was built with local gifts, its lumber hauled by wagon from the port of Saint Marys on Copano Bay. A larger frame church went up in 1904 at Saint Mary's and Cleveland streets. In 1911, under Rev. G. M. Boyd, members built the Bungalow, which Camp Ezell's county history calls Beeville's first youth center. A new sanctuary and educational buildings followed in 1955 under Rev. Everett Y. Seale.

What the plaque says

First Methodist Church of Beeville In 1861, three years after Bee County was organized, the Rev. Berry Merchant of Corpus Christi assisted Beeville Methodists in establishing the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Between 1862 and 1870, circuit-riding preachers ministered to the congregation, and worship services were often held in Bee County's original courthouse, a small wood-frame structure. The congregation erected its first sancturary, a wood-frame building, in the early 1870s at the corner of Bowie and Monroe streets. In 1904, the congregation relocated to this site and built a Gothic structure with stained glass windows. It was replaced with a newer and larger worship facility in 1955. The congregation was part of the Corpus Christi Methodist District almost continually until 1891, when Beeville itself became a district headquarters. A district parsonage was maintained until 1927, when the city again was absorbed into the Corpus Christi District. Denominational mergers caused the congregation to change its name to the First Methodist Church in 1939 and to the First United Methodist Church in 1968. It continues to play an active role in the religious life of this community. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Corpus Christi State Park — 25 mi
  A lake park in the South Texas brush country above Mathis, on a reservoir of the Nueces, with a Civilian Conservation Corps refectory and more than 200 bird species.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 28 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.
• Presidio La Bahía — 28 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 28 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• James Lincoln de la Mothe Borglum — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Beeville — steps away
• The Railroad in Bee County — 0.2 mi
• Barnard Elliott Bee, Sr. — 0.2 mi