Gum Spring Presbyterian Church (New Danville)

The academy that met in this building was created by the Texas legislature. According to a Gregg County genealogy page on the school, the Fifth Legislature approved an act on January 25, 1854 incorporating the New Danville Masonic Female Academy. It named twelve incorporators as president and trustees and gave them power to hold and sell property and to use a common seal. The school kept operating through the Civil War, and the page says Danville was an important center for church and school gatherings before 1874.

What the plaque says

Gum Spring Presbyterian Church (New Danville) Named for nearby spring with gum log curb; organized Oct. 7, 1850, by the Rev. J. M. Becton. The 1850 roll: Mr. and Mrs. Meshack Barber, S. S. Barnett, Mrs. T. C. Barnett, Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Scott, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Sloan, Nancy Sloan, Mr. and Mrs. T. W. Templeton. Log church of 1849 burned on Dec. 31, 1857; present structure, built in 1858, housed Danville Masonic Lodge No. 101 and (1858-73) Danville Masonic Female Academy, the parent institution of Lon Morris College. Moving in 1874, congregation became the First Presbyterian Church of Kilgore. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 2.9 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 13 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 26 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.
• Tyler State Park — 27 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Kilgore — 2.3 mi
• Kilgore High School — 2.6 mi
• The New Deal Era in Kilgore — 2.7 mi
• Site of Alexander Institute — 2.8 mi