Winterfield Methodist Church

The church dates itself to 1875, according to KLTV's report on its 150th anniversary in May 2025. Members marked the 100th year by sealing pictures, newspapers and letters to the future church in a PVC pipe and burying it in October 1975. When they dug it up about fifty years later, water had damaged some items, including about 32 pictures, which the church scanned and printed as a slideshow for visitors. One member found the letter she had written as a girl. KLTV says pioneers built an arbor for worship, then a second arbor, then a wooden-framed building.

What the plaque says

Winterfield Methodist Church This church traces its origin to Methodist camp meetings held here in the farm community of Winterfield as early as the 1870s. The site of the camp meetings, which drew settlers from Gregg, Upshur, and Harrison counties, was set aside in the early 1880s for worship purposes. Two small 1880s church buildings, sanctuaries erected here in 1929 and 1957, and other facilities including an education building have served the church. The congregation sponsors a number of outreach programs and activities and continues to provide civic and religious leadership for the community. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 14 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 — 20 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.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 20 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.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• Temple Emanu-El — 0.4 mi
• Johnny Cace's Seafood and Steak House — 1.6 mi
• Site of Earpville — 1.7 mi
• John Tyson Smith — 2.2 mi