Salem United Methodist Church

The deeds name Salem's first trustees: Gabe Elkins, Pierre Ross, Joseph Henderson, Henry Briley and Clem Green. The Orange Leader says the congregation bought its property at John Avenue and Third Street in 1877, after early services in a house on the site now occupied by the Oaks Town Homes, once Gilmer Homes. Planning and fundraising for a larger building ran from 1903 to 1914, started under the Rev. S. W. Johnson. The church hosted the Texas Annual Conference's 52nd session on December 5, 1917, and became Salem Methodist after the 1939 merger that formed the Methodist Church.

What the plaque says

Salem United Methodist Church Six months after the news of emancipation reached Texas in 1865, the Louisiana-Texas-Mississippi Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for African Americans, known as the Mississippi Mission Conference, was organized on Christmas Day. In 1868, its mission at Orange began to host worship services. Baptist minister Arthur Robinson led the mission and was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph Hardin, a circuit rider from Galveston, the following year. The name Salem Methodist Episcopal Church was formally adopted when the mission became a full church in 1873. Church trustees acquired property and constructed a small frame building in 1877. For several years beginning in 1883, students of the African American School at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church attended classes in the Salem Church Building. As the congregation grew, trustees acquired additional land, and by 1923 brick was added to a second frame building. The sixtieth session of the Texas annual conference was held at Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in 1925. The church grew steadily throughout the 20th century and maintained an active role in the daily lives of the African American citizens of Orange. During the World War II population increase, elementary school classes were held in the Salem Church Building. Members of the church have been community and state leaders, including political and civil rights activists, ministers, educators, a vice president of the Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the first black and first female mayor of the city of Orange. The Salem United Methodist Church continues in the traditions of its founders with programs of service and worship. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stark Museum of Art — 0.6 mi
  A white-marble museum in Orange built by the Stark Foundation and opened in 1978, holding Western art, American Indian art, Audubon's Birds of America and Steuben glass, free to enter.
• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 1.1 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 20 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 21 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Saint Paul Christian Methodist Episcopal Church — steps away
• Black Education in Orange County — steps away
• Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church — steps away
• Black Education in Orange County — 0.3 mi