Jackson Ranch Church

The church grew out of a family that came to Texas to live openly together. Nathaniel Jackson of Alabama and Matilda Hicks, who had been enslaved by his family, left in 1859 with their grown children and settled on Porción 71 near the Rio Grande, neighbors of John and Sylvia Webber. Tradition says they sheltered people fleeing slavery and ferried them to Mexico. Their son Martin gave the land for the church, and his brother Eli started a cemetery nearby in 1865. Border barrier construction began a few feet from it in 2020.

What the plaque says

Jackson Ranch Church This fellowship was founded in 1874 by the Rev. Alexander H. Sutherland (1848-1911), an early Methodist missionary, on Juan Manuel de La Vina's El Capote Ranch. In 1883 the congregation began meeting near this site on the Jackson Ranch when owner Martin Jackson donated the land. He later built a small chapel for their use. In 1910 most of the church members moved to the new city of McAllen, and only a few families continued to worship here. As one of the first Protestant congregations in Hidalgo County, this church has continued to serve area residents. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 3.1 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• La Lomita Chapel — 10 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 14 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.
• Museum of South Texas History — 15 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.

More markers nearby

• Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal Company — 1.1 mi
• Hidalgo-Reynosa Bridges — 5.3 mi
• Quinta Mazatlan_Home of Jason Matthews — 6.6 mi
• First Pharr School — 6.9 mi