United Methodist Church of Rhome

Rhome began under another name. The Handbook of Texas says Prairie Point sat where two stagecoach lines crossed, settled in the late 1850s by Missourians. Samuel Sheets began selling lots in 1858, the year a post office opened. By the early 1860s, with a hotel, a school and several businesses, it was the county's second largest settlement. The war left it defended only by old men and boys, and by 1863 it was virtually deserted. Railroad tracks came by 1882, and a new town took the name Rhome in 1883.

What the plaque says

United Methodist Church of Rhome Organized in the 1880s under the direction of the Reverend F. V. Evans, this church held early services in the Prairie Point Schoolhouse, under brush arbors and in a tent. The first building was completed in 1903 from funds raised by the congregation. It was located on land conveyed by Colonel Benjamin Morris and his wife Roxana, donors of the Rhome townsite. In 1940 the congregation moved to a remodeled building that had been the chapel of an early Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Since the 1880s, members of the United Methodist Church have led in Rhome's development. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wise County Courthouse — 14 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 20 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 22 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 22 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.

More markers nearby

• First National Bank in Rhome — steps away
• Aurora Cemetery — 1.6 mi
• Site of First Post Office in Wise County, Odessa — 4.1 mi
• Dido Cemetery — 7.1 mi