Site of First Church Building in Waco

The Methodists' college is the bigger story behind this church. According to the Handbook of Texas, Waco Female College was chartered on February 11, 1860, though classes began in September 1857, under the conference but meant to be nonsectarian. It put up a main building in 1859 and 1860 on a square reserved for a college in the original town plat, and grew from 126 students in 1883 to 202 in 1893. It moved to a new thirteen-acre campus about 1892 and closed in 1895 after financial trouble.

What the plaque says

Site of First Church Building in Waco Near this site about 1850, according to local tradition, worshipers gathered in a simple log house to hear Methodist Minister Joseph P. Sneed deliver a sermon. The house, long since removed, is considered the first Waco church building, and Sneed's followers are credited with founding Waco's first Methodist congregation. Sneed had previously served as an itinerant Methodist preacher with the Mississippi Conference in Lousiana and Arkansas. After 1851 he remained in Texas and died in Milam County in 1881. About 1851 the Methodists erected a frame church at Second and Jackson street (2 blocks SW), with Sneed as pastor. That building also served as a Sunday school and was later used by both Baptists and Presbyterians. In 1858 the Methodists built a brick church at Third and Franklin streets (three blocks west), no longer extant. The congregation moved services back to Second and Jackson streets in 1868 to meet in the new Waco Female College, a Methodist Institute. In 1879 these Methodists moved to an imposing new structure at Fifth and Jackson streets (five blocks SW). This congregation, known officially as First Methodist Church after 1919 and unofficially as the "Mother Church," moved in 1963 to 4901 Cobbs Drive. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Suspension Bridge — 0.3 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 0.3 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 0.4 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 1.0 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.

More markers nearby

• A. J. Moore High School — steps away
• Jacob De Cordova — 0.3 mi
• Waco, County Seat of McLennan County — 0.3 mi
• Thomas Hudson Barron — 0.4 mi