Matagorda Methodist Church

Jesse Hord's journal gives the church its start. The Galveston District reports show who filled it. Matagorda counted 20 white and 13 Black members in 1853 and 50 white and 32 Black by 1858, in a county where the 1851 report listed four free people of color and 1,362 enslaved. Those Black Methodists belonged to a congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the reports use the period term colored. The first building of about 1851 fell in the 1854 hurricane, its roof never found. In December 1839 Matagorda was one of seven churches in the Ruterville District.

What the plaque says

Matagorda Methodist Church One of the earliest Methodist churches in Texas. Founded January 6, 1839, by the Rev. Jesse Hord, a circuit rider who recorded that he came through "Black mud, a pouring down rain and a howling norther" to hold services in Matagorda. When he preached at "Early candle light" (dusk), four persons came forward to form the nucleus of the present church. The first church building was erected about 1851 but was destroyed by the great hurricane of 1854, which leveled almost every building in town. In 1869 worship was held in the county courthouse; in 1891 the present parsonage was built. In 1892 members decided they must have a proper church after being accidentally locked out of their meeting place -- the schoolhouse -- on a cold, rainy Thanksgiving Day. Long leaf yellow pine and cypress were brought in from Galveston and the present church was completed 1893. A Sunday school was soon founded by the Ladies' Aid Society. In 1927, Sunday School rooms, a kitchen, and study were built. In 1942, another hurricane and flood damaged, but did not destroy, the church. Today, though many improvements and new furnishings have been recently added, the original bible, bell, and hand-made cypress pews are still in service. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 29 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Matagorda Island — 37 mi
  A 38-mile barrier island reached only by boat from Port O'Connor, with a lighthouse of 1852, the ghosts of two towns and a fort, and no water, power or cars.

More markers nearby

• Matagorda Lodge No. 7, A.F. & A.M. — steps away
• City of Matagorda — steps away
• Christ Church — steps away
• Site of Dream Colony of Jane McManus — 0.3 mi