DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it straight along to you. Way out on Indian Creek, sometime between 1870 and 1875, a little congregation came together and called itself the Indian Creek Church. Nobody was building grand sanctuaries out there.
Just people gathering, holding their faith close, and making do. Around 1885, the congregation picked up and moved to Bartlett, and for a while they made do in the way that frontier churches always did. A store.
A schoolhouse. Even the Baptist church down the road opened its doors to them. You work with what you've got.
Finally, in 1890, the Methodists got a church of their own. That was something. But the story wasn't finished.
Not by a long shot. In 1896 they built the sanctuary that still stands today. Enlarged in 1912, it sat with an unpaid debt hanging over it until a donation from a Mrs.
S. T. Morrison helped clear the books.
And on June 19, 1921, they held a proper dedication. The man chosen to speak that day was the Reverend H. A.
Boaz, an early pastor of this very congregation. Now here's where the story gets a little bigger than the building. That same H.
A. Boaz went on to become a bishop and president of Southern Methodist University. He started here, in Bartlett, in a congregation that had once held services in a borrowed store.
The fellowship itself grew from 13 members all the way to a peak of 310 in the late 1950s. Thirteen souls to three hundred and ten. Indian Creek to Bartlett, a store to a dedicated sanctuary.
Some congregations don't just survive. They build something worth marking.
What the marker says
Organized between 1870 and 1875 as the Indian Creek Church, this congregation moved to Bartlett about 1885. Services were held in a store, schoolhouse, and Baptist church before construction of a Methodist church in 1890. Built in 1896, the present sanctuary was enlarged in 1912 and dedicated on June 19, 1921, after a donation by Mrs. S. T. Morrison helped pay the debt. Dedication speaker was the Rev. H. A. Boaz, an early pastor here who later became a bishop and president of Southern Methodist University. The fellowship grew from 13 members to a peak of 310 in the late 1950s.