Sugar Land First United Methodist Church

The congregation grew up in a town that the sugar company was still reshaping. In 1913 it built eight and a half miles of levee and twenty miles of drainage ditches to keep the Brazos out, and dredging between 1917 and 1928 reclaimed more farmland. The last sugarcane crop in Fort Bend County was harvested in 1928; plant disease and the federal tax on cane sugar ended it, and raw sugar was imported after that. The Kempner family became sole owners of the town in 1946, and it had grown to 63,328 people by 2000.

What the plaque says

Sugar Land First United Methodist Church METHODIST SERVICES IN SUGAR LAND DATE BACK TO AS EARLY AS 1910, WHEN REV. C.C. MILLER ORGANIZED AN INFORMAL CHURCH. THERE WAS NO FULL-TIME MINISTER, AND ACTIVITIES SUCH AS EVANGELICAL WORSHIP SERVICES, BIBLE STUDY AND HYMN SINGING WERE INTERMITTENT. IN 1918, THE IMPERIAL SUGAR COMPANY DONATED CHURCH PARK, A PARCEL OF LAND BETWEEN MAIN AND WOOD STREETS, FOR THE METHODIST, PRESBYTERIAN, BAPTIST AND CATHOLIC CONGREGATIONS TO BUILD CHURCHES. IN AUGUST 1919, MISSIONARY MINISTER REV. C.E. CLARK CAME TO OFFICIALLY ORGANIZE THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH. THE TRUSTEES IN 1919 WERE C.J. BERNEY, MRS. C.A. DIERKS, CHARLES VALLENGA, MRS. W.M. BROOKS, E.S. REPP AND C.N. FRANKS. REV. T.W. ST. JOHN SERVED AS THE FIRST APPOINTED MINISTER. THE FIRST CHURCH BUILDING WAS A ONE-STORY FRAME STRUCTURE WITH STAINED GLASS WINDOWS, INCLUDING "JESUS PRAYING IN THE GARDEN," WHICH HAS BEEN INSTALLED IN SUBSEQUENT SANCTUARIES AND IN THE PRAYER CHAPEL OF THE PRESENT CAMPUS. EARLY MINISTRIES INCLUDED A CHURCH CHOIR, EASTER CANTATAS, WOMEN'S METHODIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY (LATER UNITED METHODIST WOMEN), YOUTH GROUPS, AND LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BENEVOLENT CAUSES. INCREASING MEMBERSHIP NECESSITATED RELOCATION, AND IN 1955, THE CONGREGATION PURCHASED THREE ACRES ON ELDRIDGE ROAD AND BUILT A MODERN CHURCH AND HALL. THE CHURCH BOUGHT ADDITIONAL ACREAGE IN THE 1960s AND COMPLETED A NEW BRICK SANCTUARY IN 1977. THE PRESENT 936-SEAT BRICK SANCTUARY WAS COMPLETED IN 1999. ADDITIONAL FACILITIES HAVE INCLUDED THE SCHOOL FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, YOUTH CENTER (FORMER LAURA ELDRIDGE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL), EDUCATION CENTER AND PERRY ABERNATHY RECREATION CENTER. THROUGH THE 20TH CENTURY AND INTO THE 21ST, FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH HAS MINISTERED TO THE SPIRITUAL AND PRACTICAL NEEDS OF ITS NEIGHBORS AND THE WORLD. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 15 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 15 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.
• Rothko Chapel — 15 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 16 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Sugar Land Independent School District No. 17 — 0.8 mi
• Stafford's Point — 2.2 mi
• Hodge's Bend Cemetery — 2.7 mi
• Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado, First Railroad in Texas — 4.0 mi