Scatter Branch Church

The Handbook of Texas places settlers at Scatter Branch, between the South and Middle Sulphur rivers, by the 1850s, among them the Goff, Crunk, Crisp, Langford and Blair families, who farmed and raised stock. A school and cemetery came early. When the old schoolhouse burned, citizens built a new one in 1879 that also served for church services. In the 1880s landowner B. F. Kelly gave a site for a church. By the early 1900s the community had its own school district. The school later closed, but the shared Methodist and Baptist church carried on.

What the plaque says

Scatter Branch Church Jointly owned Methodist and Baptist edifice. The two congregations hold united communion, Sunday School services; share up-keep. Pastors alternate Sundays. Partnership began 1893. Moved here 1927 and built present building. Named for branch that spreads over area in flood time. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 10 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.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 19 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 27 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• St. Paul School — 3.1 mi
• East Texas State University — 3.6 mi
• Birthplace of Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault — 4.0 mi
• Incorporation of Commerce — 4.2 mi