Uvalde Methodist Church

By 1930, 40 percent of Uvalde County's 12,445 people were Mexican American, many from families who had arrived after 1910 to work the farms, the asphalt mines and the railroads. Deed restrictions that barred Anglo homeowners from selling to Black, Asian and Hispanic buyers confined Mexican American families to lots in colonias. The county's churches kept separate places of worship until an integrated Catholic church emerged in Uvalde in 1965. Organized efforts for Hispanic civil rights in the county began with the Tomas Valle Post of the American Legion.

What the plaque says

Uvalde Methodist Church The Rev. Thomas Myers organized this congregation in 1856, soon after the town of Uvalde was founded. At that time, this was the Western limit of the Methodist Ministry in Texas. Early members of the Uvalde congregation included the Dillard, Pulliam, Nunn, Burchfield, Robinson, and Griner Families. H.W. Griner served as first Sunday school Superintendent. The church held services in the courthouse, the school building, and the park until a sanctuary was built about 1859-60 on Garden Street on land deeded by Reading Black, founder of Uvalde. Another sanctuary was built on Getty Street about 1882 at a site conveyed by the G.T. Nunn Family. Construction of the present sanctuary in 1907-08 was overseen by Building Committee members D.W. Barnhill, Harry Hornby,Sr., and J.G. Smyth. The 1909 and 1916 sessions of the West Texas Annual Conference were held here. The early congregation brought stability, leadership, and spiritual values to an unsettled frontier. Through the years the members have continued to seek those goals and enlarge their scope of service. 1985

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Briscoe-Garner Museum — steps away
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 0.2 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Fort Inge Historical Site — 2.7 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.

More markers nearby

• Original Site of Uvalde High School — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Uvalde — steps away
• Judge John Nance Garner — steps away
• Captain William Benson — steps away