First United Methodist Church of Waxahachie

The Handbook of Texas follows Waxahachie's news and its railroad. The first newspaper, the Waxahachie Argus, began publishing in 1870, and the town incorporated on April 28, 1871, with a mayor and aldermen. Four years later the legislature chartered the Waxahachie Tap Railroad to Garrett, twelve miles east. Ground was broken on June 14, 1875, and the line was running by September 1879. Within a year it carried over 5,000 bales of cotton out and more than 140 carloads of lumber in. The Houston and Texas Central absorbed the Tap in 1881 and extended it toward Fort Worth.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Waxahachie In the spring of 1849, the Rev. Falacius Reynolds and nine charter members met in the cabin of E. W. and Nancy Rogers in the new settlement of Waxahachie and established a Methodist society. The congregation erected its first house of worship in 1852. A new building, built in 1856, was shared with local Cumberland Presbyterian and Baptist congregations. In 1866 the Central Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was organized at the Waxahachie church. A third building, erected in 1893, was lost to a fire in 1904 and was replaced in 1905. The congregation struggled through the Depression era to flourish in the 1940s and 1950s. A fifth church complex was erected in 1950. Church members remain active in community service. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 0.6 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.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 18 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 31 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Site of Marvin College — 0.4 mi
• Central Presbyterian Church — 0.4 mi
• N. P. Sims Library and Lyceum — 0.5 mi
• Site of a Confederate Powder Mill — 0.5 mi