Founding of the First Methodist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture Hays County in the summer of 1847. There's not a whole lot here yet.

No grand buildings, no steepled sanctuaries reaching up toward a Texas sky. Just land, and people trying to make something of it. And on this very site, inside the log house belonging to a man named John D.

Pitts, born in 1797, something was about to happen that would outlast every one of the people in that room. On August 5, 1847, a circuit rider by the name of A. B.

F. Kerr rode in. Kerr, born in 1823, was the kind of man who didn't wait for a church to come to the people.

He was the church coming to the people. And right there, in that log house, he organized a congregation. Not just any congregation.

The first church in all of Hays County. Let that settle for a moment. The first one.

They met in John Pitts's log house for two years. Two years of worship under a borrowed roof, a borrowed floor, borrowed walls. And then, when the time was right, they built their own church.

Right on the west side of the same block. They didn't go far. They didn't need to.

The ground they were already standing on had already proven itself holy enough.

What the marker says

On this site, in the log house of John D. Pitts (1797-1861), circuit rider A. B. F. Kerr (1823-81), on Aug. 5, 1847, organized the first church in Hays County. The congregation met here two years; later built a church on west side of the same block.