First United Methodist Church of Ferris

Brick made Ferris known beyond the county line. The Handbook of Texas says the area's mineral clays supported the Ferris Brick Company and other firms before World War I, and by 1914 six brick plants were operating alongside a broom factory and a weekly newspaper. Locals called the town the brick capital of the nation, and it still had four brick plants in the 1950s. Ferris grew until the 1920s, reaching 1,586 people in 1925, then slipped a little through the Depression and the war. Agriculture and brickmaking kept dominating its economy afterward.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Ferris The town of Ferris was laid out by the Houston & Texas Central Railway in 1874. In that year, the Reverend John S. Davis and the Reverend George W. Owens became the first of a series of circuit-riding ministers to serve Ferris, establishing a small body of the Methodist congregants. In 1885 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, received the donation of two town lots from the railroad, on which the church erected its first building. A parsonage was erected in 1895. Circuit riders continued to serve the Ferris congregation until the late 1890s. Ferris became a part of the Waxahachie District, Northwest Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1899. Ferris boasted a population of 311 at the beginning of the 20th century. A post office, railroad depot, express office, about 20 business and mercantile establishments, cotton gins, hotels, a school for children from primary grades through high school and several churches were among the town's features. In 1910, the Ferris church and the rest of the Waxahachie District became part of the newly-formed Central Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. New facilities were erected as needed. For much of 1924 the congregation met at Ferris High School and in the First Presbyterian Church. In 1925 the Presbyterian congregation met in the new Methodist facilities in anticipation of the completion of their new structure. A more modern facility was constructed for the Methodists in 1964. The congregation continues a strong tradition of worship, community outreach and service and mission programs. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 15 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 18 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.
• Fair Park — 18 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 18 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• City of Ferris — 0.5 mi
• Edgewood Cemetery — 6.1 mi
• Town of Lancaster — 6.9 mi
• Former Site of Head House — 6.9 mi