Methodist Episcopal Church of Douglassville

Douglassville had more than one kind of Methodist by 1859. John D. Hanes's 1976 history for the Cass County Genealogical Society records membership that year in a Protestant Methodist church, a Methodist Episcopal Church South and a Baptist church, and says the two Methodist groups later merged, without giving a date. A separate submission on the county TXGenWeb site dates the Methodist church to the 1850s, giving 1856 as well, on land donated by Williamson Petty. The Handbook of Texas lists two churches in the town in 1884.

What the plaque says

Methodist Episcopal Church of Douglassville Area Methodists established a church on this site in 1856, shortly after the founding of Douglassville. It replaced arbors and campgrounds as the center of worship, and was first served by circuit riders. Land was bought from Williamson Petty by board of trustees, which included R. P. Rutland, A. H. Chappell, S. L. Easley, J. E. Morris, W. L. and B. G. Heath, R. A. Brooks, T. J. Wilson, and J. H. Snipes. The trustees purchased land for the parsonage in 1870. The present building, erected in 1908, was remodeled and enlarged in 1947. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Atlanta State Park — 6.5 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.
• Daingerfield State Park — 23 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Museum of Regional History — 24 mi
  Texarkana's oldest museum, in an 1879 brick building on State Line Avenue, with Caddo pottery, one of Scott Joplin's pianos and a research library of city directories and photographs.

More markers nearby

• Douglassville Cemetery — steps away
• Floyds' Hill Church - Cemetery — 6.0 mi
• John Robin Heard Cemetery — 6.2 mi
• John Robin Heard — 7.1 mi