Methodism in Eagle Lake

The circuit rider who organized this church in 1872 had already preached across a continent. Orceneth Fisher, born in Chester, Vermont, in 1803, first came to Texas for his health in 1839 and was chaplain to the Republic's Congress in 1844 and 1845. He served Houston's African Mission in 1848 and edited the Texas Wesleyan Banner. In 1855 he moved to California as first editor of the Pacific Methodist, then opened Southern Methodist work in Oregon and established Corvallis College in 1861. He returned to Texas after 1870 and died in Austin in 1880.

What the plaque says

Methodism in Eagle Lake Methodism in Eagle Lake The United Methodist Church of Eagle Lake is the oldest Protestant congregation in the community. By 1864, Emma Tracy Rhine started the first private school in Eagle Lake. The one-room schoolhouse served as the first church meeting house in 1872, when circuit rider Orceneth Fisher organized a Methodist church and Sunday school. Emma Rhine organized the first Ladies Aid Society in the same year, establishing a tradition of women's groups in the church. The Methodists met in the schoolhouse until 1880, when the community built a union church. The Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian and Christian congregations shared the facility until each could build its own sanctuary. In May 1899, J.K. Davidson, James A. Harbert, R.B. Dobbins and W.Y. Westmoreland, trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, bought land on Lake Street. The Rev. R.E. Nunn directed the construction of a brick sanctuary and a parsonage. In 1939, John Robert and Otera (Fussell) Colly donated land and money for a new Methodist church, named Colly Memorial Methodist Church, in momory of their 17-year-old daughter Bobby. She died the year before by electrocution in a swimming pool; a stained glass window behind the altar was given in memory of A.W. Braun, who died trying to save her. The church facilities expanded with educational buildings and a new parsonage. The church moved one block away to the former Eagle Lake High School site in 1976. The stained glass window and a historic bell moved with the congregation, which changed its name to the United Methodist Church of Eagle Lake. More than a century after its founding, the church continues to play a significant roll in the community. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 5.8 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Stafford Opera House — 15 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.
• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.

More markers nearby

• Hotel Dallas, 1912 — steps away
• Town of Eagle Lake — 0.3 mi
• Rice Culture in Colorado County — 0.4 mi
• E. H. Henry Rosenwald School — 0.8 mi