Needville Methodist Church

German-language Methodism in Texas began with a German Methodist church in Galveston in 1846 and grew into a German district of eleven appointments by 1855, the year German Methodists started their own paper, Der Deutsche Christliche Apologet. Many German and Black Methodists had never favored slavery or secession, and after the Civil War many moved to the northern Methodist Episcopal Church, the denomination this congregation first belonged to. That church's Texas work grew to three conferences in 1874, one of them the Southern German Conference.

What the plaque says

Needville Methodist Church Originally the German Methodist Episcopal Church, North, of Needville, this congregation traces its history to 1892. The Rev. Jacob Ott, a pioneer Methodist missionary, founded the church. Early worship services were held in private homes. The congregation purchased five acres of land near Needville in 1896 and built its first sanctuary the following year. In 1927 they moved to Needville and built the present sanctuary. Church services and records were in the German language until the 1930s. The name was changed to Needville United Methodist Church in 1968. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 14 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 20 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 35 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• The Menil Collection — 35 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• Town of Needville — 0.4 mi
• Snake Creek Cemetery and Church — 5.4 mi
• Concord Cemetery — 5.7 mi
• Beasley — 8.1 mi