First United Methodist Church of Albany

The congregation traces back to a call for volunteers. In September 1873 Bishop George Pierce wrote that the dainty and the timid had no business on the frontier: the rides were long, the fare plain and the pay scanty. Levi Collins, forty-six, answered, and his first assignment was Fort Griffin, where he preached the first Methodist sermon in what became the Northwest Texas Conference. The conference's historian calls Albany the oldest existing church in that conference, organized a year before Shackelford County itself was organized.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Albany Oldest congregation in Northwest Texas Conference of Methodist Church. First church of any denomination founded in Shackelford County. Organized in 1873 at ranch home (8 miles East) of J. C. Lynch (1828-1912), a later county judge, after Shackelford was organized in 1874. At the request of Lynch, the Reverend Levi Collins (1827-1912) came here from the Weatherford circuit to meet with pioneers of the Methodist faith. The charter members were Peter, Mollie, and S. A. Gunsolus; Mr. and Mrs. Lynch; Elizabeth and Malinda McNutt. The Reverend William Manly was the first regular minister. By 1882, a small frame church had been erected on Schoolhouse Hill in Albany. After its loss in 1888 tornado, a second church was built on same site (1889), but relocated in 1909 on Main Street. In 1913, under leadership of the Reverend O. P. Clark (born 1881), a red brick building with dome was erected at present site. Its auditorium was resplendent with gas lights, but outside there still hitching racks. Razed 1947, that building was replaced (1948) with present sanctuary and fellowship hall. Educational annex was constructed in 1957, to compete plant. Membership in this church now numbers 334. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Jail Art Center — 0.4 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 14 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 23 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 30 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Fort Griffin Fandangle — steps away
• Ledbetter Salt Work, C.S.A. — 0.2 mi
• City of Albany — 0.2 mi
• The Albany News — 0.2 mi