United Methodist Church of Coolidge

Coolidge itself is young. The Handbook of Texas says it was established in 1903, as the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway laid track between Hillsboro and Mexia, and was named for a stockholder in the company. The post office opened that year as Cooledge, and the misspelling stood until 1930. Armour residents moved homes and businesses a mile to be near the rails. The town incorporated in 1905 and counted 500 people by 1910. When the railroad abandoned its track in 1942 the loss proved moderate, and the school district long served much of northern Limestone County.

What the plaque says

United Methodist Church of Coolidge A pioneer church, organized in the Armour community, about two miles to the west, on April 10, 1973, when this area was still thinly-settled. Charter members were John and Caroline Askew, A. J. Moore, Leona Waddell, and George Walker. The original one room frame church building with a spire and belfry was erected in 1874. After the Trinity & Brazos Valley Railroad bypassed Armour, the congregation in 1904 moved its building to Coolidge. Under the leadership of the Rev. J. B. Curry and Hull Askew, a son of charter members, the present edifice was built in 1922. 1974

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 9.9 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 11 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Old Fort Parker — 15 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 26 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Munger Community — 4.5 mi
• Robert M. Love — 6.2 mi
• One Half Mile North to the Site Once Occupied by Trinity University — 6.2 mi
• Tehuacana — 6.3 mi