First Presbyterian Church of Beeville

The first Presbyterian services in Beeville were borrowed ones. After informal meetings from about 1885, the congregation was organized in October 1891 with help from the Presbyterian church in Corpus Christi, and early services were held in the old Methodist church and the Opera House. Major W. S. Dugat chaired the committee that built the first church under Rev. H. R. Laird, and Frank Newcomb was the first treasurer. The present sanctuary dates to 1928, built under Rev. Horace Cunningham for about $50,000, of which Mrs. John W. Flournoy gave $20,000.

What the plaque says

First Presbyterian Church of Beeville Presbyterians in Beeville began meeting together informally as early as 1885. In 1890-91 the Rev. Henry Ruffner Laird (1842-1925) was sent to officially organize a congregation in Beeville, and this church was begun with twenty-six charter members. A sanctuary was built on the corner of Walton and North St. Mary's streets in 1892, and much surrounding property was acquired by the church in the succeeding years. In 1968 the congregation merged with the Ebenezer Presbyterian Church to form the First Presbyterian Church of Beeville. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

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

• First Baptist Church of Beeville — steps away
• James Lincoln de la Mothe Borglum — 0.3 mi
• First Methodist Church of Beeville — 0.3 mi
• The Railroad in Bee County — 0.5 mi