First Methodist Church of Richland

Richland began as a store. The Handbook of Texas says Asa Chambers kept one on the trail from Corsicana to Franklin by 1848, when a post office called Richland Crossing, for the nearby creek, opened inside it. The Houston and Texas Central reached Pisgah Ridge in 1871 and named its station Richland, and a new town gathered around the depot. By the mid-1890s it had two steam gristmills and gins, two saloons, a hardware store and a bank. The population peaked near 750 in 1929 and fell through the Depression.

What the plaque says

First Methodist Church of Richland Founded 1847 on remote frontier, by efforts of the Rev. J. E. Ferguson and the Rev. J. G. Hardin. In 1966 the American Association of Methodist Historical Societies honored Richland as the oldest continuing congregation in Central Texas Annual Conference. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 9.0 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 12 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.

More markers nearby

• Richland Cemetery — steps away
• Angus Schoolhouse — 5.7 mi
• Hopewell Cemetery — 5.8 mi
• Cade Cemetery — 5.8 mi