First Presbyterian Church of Garland

A local sketch dates this congregation's first church earlier than the plaque does. The Garland history society says it began on April 22, 1888, as the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church under the Rev. Benjamin Spencer, meeting at first in the public school. Rev. F. L. Rogers was the first pastor. By the sketch, members bought the land where the sanctuary stands and built a wooden church in 1896, and a denominational union in spring 1906 made them First Presbyterian. The brick church of 1929 carries its building committee's names on the cornerstone.

What the plaque says

First Presbyterian Church of Garland This congregation traces its roots to April 22, 1888, when the Rev. Benjamin Spencer and twenty-five charter members organized a Cumberland Presbyterian congregation. The church served a diverse membership, including farmers, retail business owners, and others. Worship services were held in a variety of locations until the first sanctuary, a one-room frame building, was built on S. Ninth Street in 1901. It was replaced by a brick structure in 1929. This church remains a reminder of Garland's early religious history. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 11 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 11 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 12 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 13 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• First Methodist Church of Garland — steps away
• First Christian Church of Garland — steps away
• Garland — 0.3 mi
• Garland Lodge No. 441, A.F. & A.M. — 0.7 mi