DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna let it breathe a little. Now, if you think a church is just a building, you haven't heard how this one got started. The heritage of Bellville Methodist Church reaches all the way back to 1822 — before Texas was Texas — when a man named Thomas B.
Bell came down from Florida with Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists. That's the founding company, the original settlers, and Bell was among them.
He put down roots west of the Brazos River, and then he did something that changed the spiritual life of that whole stretch of country: he donated fifty acres of land, right there between Piney and Caney Creeks, set aside for a church and camp meetings. Fifty acres. Just given over.
Hold that thought. By 1834, when Methodist missionary Henry Stephenson arrived in Texas, he found plans already underway for a camp meeting on that land. Something was stirring.
And then came 1835, and here's where the story gets a different kind of weight. At a meeting that year, the featured speaker was none other than William Barret Travis — a man the world would soon know as one of the heroes of the Alamo. Standing there at that camp meeting, Travis promised to help bring Methodist preachers to Texas.
He made that promise in 1835. The Alamo came in 1836. You sit with that.
The work went on. Missionary Robert Alexander conducted services at the Caney Creek camp meeting site in August of 1839. The Methodists kept coming back to that ground, kept worshipping there, all the way through the decades — until the early 1880s, when the land was finally sold.
And those funds didn't disappear. They were used to build a German Methodist Episcopal Church right in Bellville, completed in 1882. German and English speaking congregations shared that building, worshipping on alternate Sundays — same roof, different tongues, same faith.
Then in 1886, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was organized, and a new sanctuary was completed right here on this very site that same year. The Reverend J.P. Childers served as the first minister.
From fifty donated acres between two creeks, to a promise made by a man on the eve of history, to a congregation that built and shared and built again — that's a long road, and every mile of it is real. Thomas B. Bell gave the land.
The people gave the rest.
What the marker says
The heritage of Bellville Methodist Church dates to 1822, when Thomas B. Bell came to Texas from Florida with Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists. He settled in an area west of the Brazos River, and donated fifty acres of land between Piney and Caney Creeks to be used for a church and camp meetings. When Methodist missionary Henry Stephenson arrived in Texas in 1834, he found plans underway for a camp meeting. At an 1835 meeting, future Alamo hero William Barret Travis was a featured speaker, and promised to assist in the effort to bring Methodist preachers to Texas. Missionary Robert Alexander conducted services at the Caney Creek camp meeting site in August 1839. Methodists continued to use the campground for worship services until the early 1880s, when the land was sold. Funds from the sale were used to build a German Methodist Episcopal Church in Bellville in 1882. The building was used by German and English speaking congregations on alternate Sundays. The Methodist Episcopal Church, south, was organized in 1886, and a new sanctuary was completed on this site that year. The Rev. J.P. Childers served as the first minister. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986