Founding of the First Methodist Church

The circuit rider, Alfred B. F. Kerr, was twenty-four when he organized this church. Born in Giles County, Tennessee, in 1823, he arrived at Harrisburg with his family and forty other families on April 21, 1831, and grew up in what is now western Washington County. He was admitted on trial by the Texas Conference in March 1847. From 1849 to 1852 he rode his circuit as agent for Rutersville College, gathering donations for it, and later served at Goliad as agent for Payne Female Institute. Ill health ended his ministry, and he retired to San Marcos in 1876.

What the plaque says

Founding of the First Methodist Church On this site, in the log house of John D. Pitts (1797-1861), circuit rider A. B. F. Kerr (1823-81), on Aug. 5, 1847, organized the first church in Hays County. The congregation met here two years; later built a church on west side of the same block. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 1.0 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 14 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 16 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 17 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.

More markers nearby

• The Courthouses of Hays County — steps away
• William W. Moon — 0.2 mi
• Site of Hays County's First Public Building — 0.3 mi
• Eddie Durham — 0.3 mi