Poetry Methodist Church

In October 1924 fire destroyed Poetry's business district, but the churches escaped, and the Handbook of Texas says their survival helped preserve the community. The Methodist church is one of the sites it names, with the Baptist and Cumberland Presbyterian churches, Campground Cemetery and Dry Creek Cemetery. Poetry was always small, with about forty people in 1880 and an estimated 234 by 1904. In 1984 an incorporation measure passed, but county commissioners ruled it invalid on technicalities, and a new general store opened in 1986.

What the plaque says

Poetry Methodist Church Originally called Turners Point, this community was founded in 1845 by Elisha Turner. In 1855 the Methodist congregation paid Zachariah Turner and his wife Martha $20 for the original church site. The Rev. J. W. Fields, a Methodist circuit rider living in Kaufman County, witnessed the deed and may have been the organizer and first minister. After the name of the town changed to Poetry, this site was donated in 1886 by J. H. Tate and his wife Nancy. The circuit rider preached only once a month, yet the membership grew to 119 in those early days. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 7.5 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 14 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.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 23 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 — 31 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.

More markers nearby

• Poetry Baptist Church — 0.5 mi
• Dry Creek Cemetery — 1.4 mi
• Porter Farms — 3.7 mi
• Public Education in Terrell — 4.6 mi