First Methodist Church of Longview

A Methodist history compiled from Longview library files describes a log Meeting House near the J. W. Boring Cemetery that other Protestants, a school and community meetings also used. About 1860 Dr. Job Taylor, a physician and local preacher, built a church at Earpville. The Texas and Pacific deeded land to four trustees: B. Butrill, O. H. Methvin, Walter Paine and Stephen May. The present church of 1901 is called Kelly Memorial for G. A. Kelly. A chapel for Sunday school and revivals ran in Longview Junction on North Sixth Street from 1892 to 1901.

What the plaque says

First Methodist Church of Longview This congregation traces its history to 1845, when a one-room log meeting house was erected nearby for a church, school and town hall. The church was served by circuit-riding ministers until 1850. The congregation moved to Earpville on the Stagecoach Road in 1860 and moved their church building to Longview in 1874 after the arrival of the railroad. the church has grown steadily over the years and has erected several new buildings to serve its members and expanding programs. The church continues to serve the area as it has for more than 150 years. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 21 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 22 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• Delta Drilling Company — steps away
• General John Gregg — steps away
• O. H. Methvin, Sr., Founder of Longview — steps away
• The Courthouses of Gregg County — steps away