Avoca Methodist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Jones County, in a place that used to go by the name Avo, something got started in 1887 that nobody was planning to build a steeple for. Not yet, anyway.

A Methodist circuit rider by the name of Rev. J. H.

Wiseman rode into the Spring Creek community, and what he set up wasn't a church with pews and painted walls. It was a brush arbor. A camp meeting held under branches and open sky, about a mile and a half west of where Avoca stands today.

Now, brush arbor meetings have a way of taking root. The congregation that gathered under that rough canopy didn't just scatter when the meeting ended. They held on.

They stayed together. And when a railroad town called Avoca came along and a proper sanctuary was completed in 1906, that congregation moved right in. Stone and timber where there had once been branches.

A steeple reaching up where open sky used to be. But here's the thing about steeples in Texas. The sky that once sheltered that first meeting had a long memory, and a storm came along and destroyed the original steeple.

Gone. Just like that. So the congregation did what Texans do.

They adapted. In 1953, under the supervision of Rev. Joe Grimes, they added a belfry.

And what did they put inside it? Not just any bells. Two railroad locomotive bells.

Think about that for a moment. A church that was born near a railroad town, that grew from a camp meeting in the open air, now calling its people to worship with the voice of the railroad itself. The marker's recorded.

The bells are ringing. And that brush arbor in the Spring Creek community is still the beginning of the whole story.

What the marker says

This church grew from an 1887 brush arbor camp meeting in the Spring Creek community of Avo (1.5 miles west), conducted by the Rev. J. H. Wiseman, a Methodist circuit rider. The congregation moved to the new railroad town of Avoca when the present sanctuary was completed in 1906. The original steeple was later destroyed by a storm, and the belfry was added in 1953 under the supervision of the Rev. Joe Grimes to house two railroad locomotive bells. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -1981.