First United Methodist Church of Royse City

Royse City arrived by roller. When the Katy railroad passed Fate by, people looked northeast. Settlement began in 1885 once the route was known, and the first business, a general store, opened that December. G. B. Royse platted the townsite and sold the first lots in 1886, and some buildings were pulled over from Fate on rollers. A post office opened that year, and by 1890 about a thousand people lived there. Voters incorporated the town in 1891, abolished it in 1902 and reinstated it in 1906.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Royse City This fellowship, first known as the "Methodist Episcopal Church, South", was organized in 1887. The Rev. James McDugald (1847-1929) became the circuit rider for Royse City, Blackland, Fate, and Mt. Zion. Services were held in a schoolhouse until 1890 when land on Church Street was acquired from R. A. McCasland for the first church building in Royse City. This structure, erected in 1904, is on property which also belonged to the McCasland Family. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 7.7 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.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 17 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 18 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 21 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Bankhead Highway in Collin County — 1.0 mi
• Fate Presbyterian Church — 4.0 mi
• Nevada — 5.0 mi
• Nevada Baptist Church — 5.1 mi