First United Methodist Church of San Angelo

Andrew Jackson Potter, the founding pastor, was born in Missouri and after his father's death became a jockey with a rough horseracing crowd, the Handbook of Texas says. He was converted at a camp meeting in 1856. He served the Confederacy as a private and then as a chaplain. On the Kerrville circuit he preached in homes, saloons and fort chapels, sometimes with his gun propped against the pulpit, and in 1880 he preached the first Methodist sermon at the site of the future San Angelo. He died in the pulpit in Caldwell County.

What the plaque says

A product of 1870s religious zeal on this Indian-menaced frontier. After flood destroyed area's early community of Ben Ficklin (5 mi. S), closing its Sunday school, this church was organized and chartered by the West Texas Methodist Conference in November of 1882. On this site was erected a forty by sixty-foot frame building with a cupola-- said to be the first Protestant church house between Mason and El Paso. The founding pastor was the rugged frontiersman, Parson Andrew Jackson Potter (1830-1895), succeeded in 1886 by the dynamic Rev. Arthur E. Rector (1855-1955). Rapid growth soon necessitated a twenty-foot addition for nursery and choir loft. The building became a community center for various social and religious occasions. Miss Mary West (later Mrs. J. B. Taylor) organized the first choir. Other leading musicians: Miss Amie Cornick, J. R. Sanders, Mrs. L. B. Horton, Mrs. F. O. Perry, and Mrs. Mary Deal Metz. The frame church was replaced in 1904 by a large masonry building in the square "Akron" style then in vogue. The present Gothic edifice was completed in 1950. Four-story educational building was added, 1962. This church has excelled in education, sacred music, and missionary activities over the years. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum — steps away
  The upstairs rooms on Concho Avenue where a brothel ran from 1902 until the Texas Rangers closed it in 1952, shown on short guided tours with most of the furnishings original.
• San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts — 0.4 mi
  A free art museum on the Concho beside Fort Concho, founded in the fort's 1868 quartermaster building and known nationally for its biennial ceramics competition.
• Fort Concho National Historic Landmark — 0.6 mi
  The stone post at the forks of the Concho, headquarters of the Tenth Cavalry from 1875 to 1882, saved by a woman with a museum and now a city-run landmark of 23 original buildings.
• Concho River Walk — 0.7 mi
  Four miles of lit trails along the North Concho through downtown San Angelo, rebuilt after voters taxed themselves in 2004, with gardens, sculpture, a river stage and stocked trout.

More markers nearby

• Sacred Heart Catholic Church — steps away
• First Baptist Church of San Angelo — steps away
• John Yellott Rust — steps away
• The San Angelo Standard — steps away