DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, before Oak Lawn was much of anything — before the streets, before the bustle — there was a man named the Reverend Marcus H. Cullum.
Born in 1822, he was an Oak Lawn settler himself, and he wasn't the type to wait around for a proper building before he got to preachin'. He took what the land offered him: a grove of trees along Turtle Creek. That was his sanctuary.
Open sky for a ceiling, shade for a congregation, and whatever breeze Turtle Creek saw fit to send. That's where he started. Then the citizens of the area decided it was time to put something more permanent together, and the Dickason-Sale family gave the land.
On that site, they built a school-church house — one building doing the work of two, the way folks had to think back then. And on the day they opened it — September 20th, 1874 — the Reverend M. H.
Cullum stood up and formally founded the Oak Lawn Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Twenty members. That was the whole congregation.
Twenty souls on opening day. Now, by 1889, twenty members had become enough of a community that they raised a larger building — one with spires reaching up into that Texas sky. Then came the present structure, built between 1911 and 1915, enlarged in 1928, and enlarged again in 1950.
The name of the church shifted over the years, carried along by changes in the national organization. But the roots held. The Reverend Cullum, who passed in 1885 and didn't live to see those spires or that 1911 building or any of what came after, had planted something that kept growing long past him.
Twenty members in 1874. More than two thousand to follow. Not bad for a preacher who started in a grove.
What the marker says
An Oak Lawn settler, the Rev. Marcus H. Cullum (1822 - 1885), preached in a grove on Turtle Creek until citizens built a school-church house here on site given by the Dickason-Sale family. At opening of that building, Sept. 20, 1874, the Rev. M. H. Cullum founded the Oak Lawn Methodist Episocopal Church, South. A larger building with spires was erected in 1889. The present structure was built 1911-15, and enlarged in 1928 and 1950. Church name has been altered by changes in national organization. Membership has grown from 20 in 1874 to more than 2,000.