Merit Methodist Church

Merit was named by Dr. O. Murcheson for a judge called Merritt, the Handbook of Texas says, and settlement began in the late 1860s or early 1870s. A post office came in 1884, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe arrived two years later, making Merit a shipping point. By the early 1890s it had a steam gin, a gristmill, about twenty other businesses and 300 residents; by World War I, 500 people and two banks. The Merit and Floyd school districts merged as Bland in 1948, and the town fell to 185 by the early 1950s.

What the plaque says

Merit Methodist Church Organized in April 1871. First pastor was the Rev. W. P. Reed; first member, Margaret Owens. Services were held at Merit School. In 1888 land was bought and a frame church built. Wrecked by a 1905 storm and then rebuilt, church still serves descendants of original members. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 13 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 19 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.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 21 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

• Bethlehem Baptist Church — 3.9 mi
• First Methodist Church of Farmersville — 5.1 mi
• Gussie Nell Davis — 5.2 mi
• Audie Murphy's Homecoming, June 15, 1945 — 5.2 mi