DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. September 4, 1884. A visiting pastor by the name of Reverend W.
W. Killough rode into Cotulla, and before he rode out again, he had established a Presbyterian congregation right there in La Salle County. Now, that congregation didn't have a building to call their own, not yet.
So they did what good neighbors do. They worshiped with the Methodists. They worshiped with the Baptists.
Borrowed pews, borrowed walls, shared the Lord under somebody else's roof. Years went by like that. Then came the ministry of the Reverend A.
J. Hall, and in 1891, the congregation finally raised up a church of their very own. A small frame building.
Modest, sure. But theirs. Then the Reverend Harry W.
Hamilton took the pulpit in 1909, and he didn't go anywhere. He stayed with that congregation year after year, through whatever this stretch of Texas threw at them, until his death in 1940. That is a long faithfulness.
Now here is where the story takes a hard turn. In 1963, fire came for that little frame church. And fire, as fire does, took nearly everything.
Nearly. One thing survived. A silver communion service.
That's it. Out of a whole church, that's what the flames left behind. You have to sit with that a moment.
Two years later, in 1965, the congregation dedicated a new structure. Same faith, new walls. Still standing in Cotulla.
That silver communion service, I expect, still doing what it was made to do.
What the marker says
On September 4, 1884, the Rev. W. W. Killough, a visiting pastor, established this Presbyterian congregation. Members worshiped in the Methodist and Baptist churches before erecting their own church building in 1891, ;during the ministry of the Rev. A. J. Hall. The Rev. Harry W. Hamilton served as pastor from 1909 until his death in 1940. In 1963 the small frame church was destroyed by fire; only a silver communion service was saved. The present structure was dedicated in 1965.