McMahan's Chapel

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of McMahan's Chapel. Now, most churches in Texas have a beginning you can point to, a date, a deed, a name on a door. But this one, this one goes back so far that Texas itself wasn't even Texas yet.

We're talking 1833. The Republic of Mexico still held the land, and a man named Colonel Samuel McMahan opened his home so that a traveling preacher, the Reverend James P. Stevenson, could organize what the marker calls a religious society.

That was the seed. Just folks gathered in a private home, with a preacher born in 1808 who would live all the way to 1885, planting something that nobody could know would outlast empires. Then came July of 1834, and the Reverend Henry Stephenson came through and organized it properly as a Methodist Church.

So you've got two reverends, two moments, one unbroken thread. The first actual building didn't go up right away. It took until 1839, when the Reverend Littleton Fowler saw it through to completion and gave it the name that would stick across the centuries.

McMahan's Chapel. Named for the colonel whose home had started the whole thing six years before. That building served its people until 1872, when a new building displaced it.

Then that one, too, gave way in 1900. Buildings come and buildings go, but the congregation kept right on. The oldest Methodist church with a continuous existence in the entire state of Texas, still standing in Sabine County, still carrying that name.

Some things, it turns out, are just built to last.

What the marker says

The oldest Methodist church having a continuous existence in Texas. Organized as a "religious society," 1833, at the home of Colonel Samuel McMahan by the Rev. James P. Stevenson (1808-1885). As a Methodist Church, July 1834, by the Rev. Henry Stephenson. First building was completed in 1839 by the Rev. Littleton Fowler and given the name of McMahan's Chapel. Displaced by a new building in 1872 and again in 1900. Erected by the State of Texas 1936