Two Miles Southeast to McMahan's Chapel

Duane's take

Well, friends, I'm givin' you my telling of what the official marker says, so let's get into it. Two miles southeast of where you're rolling right now, something is waiting that you do not want to drive past without knowing about. McMahan's Chapel.

The oldest Methodist church with a continuous existence in the state of Texas. Let that settle for a second. Not one of the oldest.

The oldest, with a continuous, unbroken existence, going all the way back to when Texas was still a part of Mexico. September of 1833, the Reverend James P. Stevenson organized the congregation as a religious society.

That's what the marker calls it, a religious society, and there's something quietly powerful about that phrase. A handful of people, out here in the deep piney woods of Sabine County, deciding that what they had together was worth naming and keeping. Then, less than a year later, in July of 1834, the Reverend Henry Stephenson came through and organized it properly as a Methodist Church.

Two reverends, two moments of founding, one continuous thread that never broke. The first building, an actual physical home for that congregation, wasn't completed until 1839. You can imagine what it took to raise it.

Then 1872 came, and the congregation had grown enough, or the old walls had worn enough, that a new building replaced it. And then, because a living congregation keeps on living, 1900 brought yet another new building to replace that one. Three buildings, one unbroken story, stretching from 1833 to right now.

The Reverend James P. Stevenson, born in 1808, died in 1885, never knowing quite what he had started in that September moment, in a place that would outlast everything around it. That, right there, two miles southeast, is the oldest continuous Methodist church in Texas.

Some things just hold.

What the marker says

The oldest Methodist church having a continuous existence in Texas. Organized as a "religious society," September 1833 by the Reverend James P. Stevenson, 1808-1885, as a Methodist Church, July 1834 by the Reverend Henry Stephenson. First building was completed in 1839. Displaced by a new building in 1872 and again in 1900.