Summerfield Methodist Church

The Gregg County genealogy volunteers' family sheet for Bluford W. Brown, the legislator THC's Greenwood Cemetery marker credits with securing the county's creation, gives his birth as January 31, 1831, in Bibb County, Alabama. He served as a captain in Company G, 44th Alabama Infantry, in Virginia battles, then came to Texas and sat several terms in the legislature for Upshur and Gregg counties. His daughter Mittie Florence was born at Summerfield in 1869, and Mary A. died there in 1877. He died February 9, 1897.

What the plaque says

Summerfield Methodist Church SUMMERFIELD METHODIST CHURCH WAS BUILT IN 1869 ON LAND DONATED BY PARSON B.W. BROWN WHO WAS ALSO LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FORMATION OF GREGG COUNTY. NAMED AFTER A CHURCH THE BROWN FAMILY HAD ATTENDED IN ALABAMA, THE CHURCH STANDS AS THE ONLY REMAINING NAMESAKE OF THE PIONEER COMMUNITY KNOWN AS SUMMERFIELD. CONSTRUCTION BEGAN ON A NEW CHURCH WING IN 1952, AND A NEW CHURCH SANCTUARY, EDUCATION WING, AND PARSONAGE WERE BUILT ON THE ORIGINAL SITE BY 1975. THE ORIGINAL BELL REMAINS IN FRONT OF THE PRESENT SANCTUARY. THE CHURCH FORMED ONE OF THE FIRST OFFICIAL WOMAN'S CHURCH SOCIETIES IN THE AREA IN 1937 AND HAS BEEN THE ANCHOR OF THE COMMUNITY SINCE THE MID-19TH CENTURY. (2011)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 16 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 22 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 22 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Judson — 1.6 mi
• Sherman Chapel Missionary Baptist Church — 2.6 mi
• Elmira Chapel Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 3.4 mi
• Wartime Home Industry — 4.1 mi