First Methodist Church of Whitewright

Whitewright was an investor's town. The Handbook of Texas says William Whitewright, a New York investor, bought a tract in 1878 in the path of the Katy railroad, had it surveyed as a townsite, and left agents Jim Reeves and Jim Batsell to sell lots. Within ten years the town had incorporated and supported Grayson College, a public school, a newspaper, three hotels, two gins and two banks. A post office followed in 1888, and by the mid-1920s the Katy and the Cotton Belt both served the town.

What the plaque says

First Methodist Church of Whitewright This congregation traces its history to Sears Chapel (one mile southeast), a Union Church established in the late 1850s at the home of early settlers Christopher and Mary Sears. In 1876 the Sears family deeded the land on which the Sears Chapel Church building stood to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The village of Whitewright was established in 1878. The Methodist congregation associated with Sears Chapel organized the First Methodist Church of Whitewright in 1882. By 1885 the congregation had completed a sanctuary and a parsonage and was served by the Rev. W. M. Robbins, a circuit-riding Methodist preacher. A Sunday School, organized in 1886, averaged about 50 pupils during its early years of operation. A new sanctuary, built at this site in 1895, served the congregation for over 100 years. A new parsonage was completed in 1930, and in 1942 the church erected an education building. Major renovations to the church and education buildings were completed in 1979. The church, renamed First United Methodist Church in 1968, supports a variety of special annual events and continues to be active in many local and foreign outreach programs. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 24 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Whitewright Masonic Lodge No. 167 — 0.2 mi
• Whitewright — 0.3 mi
• Vittitoe Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• Kentucky Town — 2.5 mi