Grace First Presbyterian Church

The women's school the plaque mentions has dates of its own. The Handbook of Texas says the Texas Female Seminary was organized in 1890 at Weatherford under the Cumberland Presbyterian church, with W. G. Templeton as director. When most Cumberland Presbyterian churches in Texas joined the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., the student body asked for a new name, and it became Texas Fairmont Seminary. The synod then concentrated its support on Trinity University, and the seminary closed about 1920. The plaque says the Presbyterians founded it in 1889 and sold it in 1911 to the Weatherford Sanitarium.

What the plaque says

Grace First Presbyterian Church Three congregations, the earliest founded in 1859, joined forces in Parker County to create Grace First Presbyterian Church. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the oldest of the three congregations, focused on education as an important ministry to this church. The Pioneer School at Veal Station was deeded to the church to improve the education of Parker County's youth. The Texas Female Seminary was established in 1889 by the Presbyterians and flourished until 1911 when it was sold to the Weatherford Sanitarium. The Weatherford Presbyterian Church (later the First Presbyterian Church) was established by the P.C.U.S. in 1874. When the Rev. H. A. Tucker, related to the northern branch of Presbyterianism, was mistakenly called by the Weatherford Presbyterian Church, the result was the establishment of the First Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Grace Presbyterian Church, a U.S.A. congregation, in 1906 grew out of the Cumberland congregation. Grace and first informally joined forces in 1927 after prayer and consideration. In 1964 the Weatherford congregations merged to organize as Grace First Presbyterian Church. Members have contributed to the community in numerous ways, including the establishment and continuing support of Manna Storehouse, Inc., the first community-based agency to provide food and clothing for Parker County's needy citizens. Grace First members helped establish the Parker County chapter of Habitat for Humanity and are also active in the work of the Fort Worth Presbyterian night shelter. In 1974, g Grace First Presbyterian Church celebrated 100 years of worship and service in the Weatherford community by moving into a new building, and continues to worship and serve the Parker County community to this day. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chandor Gardens — 0.8 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 14 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 21 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Acton State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.

More markers nearby

• Governor S.W.T. Lanham — 1.0 mi
• Prince Memorial CME Church — 1.2 mi
• Weatherford College Old Main Building — 1.2 mi
• Weatherford — 1.4 mi