Frisco Methodist Church

Frisco was first called Emerson, after Francis Emerson, the McKinney banker who owned the farm where the townsite was laid out. He had promised to place a national bank there if the town took his name, and the bank was never established. Emerson looked too much like Emberson in Lamar County, so when the post office opened in 1902 the town became Frisco City, for the St. Louis, San Francisco and Texas Railway, popularly the Frisco system. The name was later shortened. Residents of nearby Erudia and Lebanon moved in to use the railroad.

What the plaque says

Frisco Methodist Church Area frontier settlers William and Frances Rogers, Peter and Sarah Teel, and Elizabeth Rogers, and the Rev. Joab Biggs, a Methodist circuit-riding minister, organized this congregation in William Rogers' log home in 1848. Known as Bethel Methodist Church, the small rural congregation erected its first sanctuary in 1852 on land donated by William Rogers. A school building erected by the church in the early 1870s was converted for use as a sanctuary in 1882. In 1874 Joseph Rogers donated land on which the church held camp meetings that became such large events that a large shed was built at the site in 1888. In 1902 the church moved here to the new railroad town of Frisco, erected a sanctuary at a downtown location, and changed its name to Frisco Methodist Church. A new brick sanctuary was completed in 1915. The congregation changed its name to First United Methodist Church of Frisco in 1968. In 1982, after 80 years of serving Frisco from its downtown facilities, the congregation erected a new sanctuary at this site to serve its growing membership. Over the years the congregation has expanded its education programs. The church continues to serve the area with various group activities and outreach programs. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 11 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.
• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 20 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 24 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Lebanon — 2.5 mi
• Young Cemetery — 3.9 mi
• Rowlett Creek Cemetery — 4.3 mi
• Site of Rock Hill — 4.4 mi