First United Methodist Church of Gladewater

The county's church history says the Rev. J. L. Willis, a ministerial student, was the first pastor, preaching on the first Sunday of each month, and that for ten years the church belonged to the Winona Circuit. The first sanctuary was a one-room frame building on Godfrey land. In 1931 the congregation bought its present site at Quitman and Ferry. A brick church with cathedral stained glass windows, costing over $19,000, went up in 1935 and was dedicated in 1937, when the Godfreys gave a walnut grand piano. Membership grew from 45 in 1923 to 655 in 1971.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Gladewater Developed as a railroad town in the 1870s, Gladewater grew slowly but steadily in the first decades of its existence. In 1922, twelve adults and two children led by the Rev. H.T. Perritte of Longview met in Mr. and Mrs. J.A. Godfrey's home to organize a congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. They soon built a simple one-room sanctuary. The church and the town experienced dramatic growth beginning in the 1930s, when a local oil boom brought more residents. Since that time, members have formed women's and men's groups to support the church and its many services and programs. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 12 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Tyler State Park — 20 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 21 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 21 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.

More markers nearby

• Gladewater Lodge No. 852, A.F. & A.M. — steps away
• John Ben Shepperd — steps away
• New Hope Missionary Baptist Church — 0.5 mi
• Gladewater — 0.8 mi