Oak Island Presbyterian Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. Way out in what would one day become Freestone County, before the county even had a name worth writing down, five people gathered on September the eleventh, 1847, and decided they were going to build something that mattered. Five.

That's all it took. Mrs. Mary Archibald, Samuel N.

Archibald, Thos. W. Archibald, Eloisa Patton, and Mrs.

Mary S. Patton. The Reverend John Limber presided over the whole affair, and just like that, Oak Island Presbyterian Church drew its first breath as the first church organized in what was to become Freestone County.

Now Mrs. Mary S. Patton's husband, he donated the land for the church, so the family had some skin in the game from the very beginning.

Five charter members on a piece of donated ground, and they meant business. Fast forward to 1873, and that little congregation had grown to a hundred and two members, with eighty-eight children filling up the Sunday School. Eighty-eight children.

That is not a quiet Sunday morning, friends. That is a full house, and then some. But here's where the story takes a turn, the kind of turn that didn't ask anybody's permission.

The railroad came through Mexia in the 1870s, and when a railroad arrives, people tend to follow it. They did. The congregation declined as many people moved toward Mexia, drawn by whatever a railroad brings to a place.

Slowly, steadily, the pews thinned out. And in 1899, after more than half a century of Sundays, Oak Island Presbyterian Church was discontinued. Gone quiet.

But the cemetery stayed. It's still out there, holding the names of many area pioneers, the very people who were Freestone County before Freestone County knew what it was going to be. Five people started it.

A railroad ended it. And the ground remembers everyone in between.

What the marker says

First church organized in what was to become Freestone County. Started Sept. 11, 1847, by five charter members: Mrs. Mary Archibald, Samuel N. Archibald, Thos. W. Archibald, Eloisa Patton and Mrs. Mary S. Patton, whose husband donated land for church. The Rev. John Limber presided. By 1873 had 102 members and 88 children in Sunday School, but congregation declined after railroad came through Mexia in 1870s, causing many people to move there. Discontinued in 1899. Many area pioneers are buried in church cemetery.