First United Methodist Church of Pasadena

The Methodist society of 1896 began in Deepwater, a railroad town Pasadena later swallowed. It grew around a station on the Galveston, Houston and Northern Railway and counted fifty people in 1893. A post office opened in 1894, and by 1896 Deepwater had about 200 residents, a sawmill, a blacksmith, a hotel, a church, a general store and a weekly paper, the Enterprise. In 1905 its White and Black schools each had a single teacher. The post office closed in 1921, and by the 1980s only an abandoned station marked the townsite.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Pasadena A "society" of Methodists was first formed in the area in 1896 in the nearby community of Deepwater. In 1898, seven people organized a Methodist congregation in Pasadena, and the church first met in the town's one-room schoolhouse. These charter members were Martha H. Knapp Bailey Rawlins, William B. Bailey Sr., William B. Bailey Jr., Katherine Lydia Hogge Bailey, Robert McPherson Guinn, Katie Guinn Weeks and Lydia Zlomke Gigstad. By 1904, the congregation had grown to twenty members and a frame church building was constructed at the corner of South Shaver and Broadway in 1907. As Pasadena shifted from an agrarian community to an industrial one, the town and the Methodist congregation expanded. Additional sanctuaries were built in 1938 and 1955, and the church relocated to Fairmont Parkway in 1986. During its history, First United Methodist Church has served the community by providing food and shelter through the Society of Saint Stephen, and assistance in remodeling and home maintenance through the Levites. The Pasadena Rotary Club has met for a weekly lunch at the church since 1936, and the church has organized two boy scout troops and a girl scout troop. Missionary outreach of the congregation includes regular work in an orphanage in Mexico, contributions to the programs of the Unalaska United Methodist Church in Alaska, and the rebuilding of St. John's United Methodist Church in Texas City, which was destroyed by fire. More than a century after its establishment, First United Methodist Church continues to serve as a vital spiritual leader for the people of Pasadena. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Space Center Houston — 9.0 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 9.6 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Emancipation Park — 12 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 13 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Genoa United Methodist Church — 2.0 mi
• First Airplane Flight Over Texas — 2.5 mi
• Ellington Field — 3.5 mi
• City of Pasadena — 4.2 mi