United Methodist Church of Rhome

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Wise County, in the little town of Rhome, there's a congregation with roots that go way back; back to the 1880s, when the Reverend F. V.

Evans looked out over this stretch of Texas prairie and decided it was time to get some folks organized. Now, when you're organizin' a church on the frontier, you work with what you've got. And what Reverend Evans and that early congregation had was the Prairie Point Schoolhouse.

They had brush arbors: just poles and branches overhead, the sky peekin' through. They had a tent. Not exactly stained glass and pipe organs, but those early worshippers showed up anyway, and they kept showin' up.

That kind of stubborn faithfulness has a way of buildin' something. And build they did. By 1903, the congregation had raised the funds themselves and completed their first real building.

Now, the land that building sat on; that's a story worth a moment of your time. It was conveyed by Colonel Benjamin Morris and his wife Roxana, the very donors of the Rhome townsite itself. The town and the church, rooted in the same soil, by the same hands.

Then came 1940, and the congregation made a move; this time into a remodeled building that had originally served as the chapel of an early Cumberland Presbyterian Church. A new chapter written inside someone else's old walls. From the 1880s right on through, members of this church have led in Rhome's development.

From brush arbors to borrowed schoolhouses to their own built-from-scratch sanctuary to a repurposed chapel; that's not just a church history. That's a town's backbone, hiding in plain sight.

What the marker says

Organized in the 1880s under the direction of the Reverend F. V. Evans, this church held early services in the Prairie Point Schoolhouse, under brush arbors and in a tent. The first building was completed in 1903 from funds raised by the congregation. It was located on land conveyed by Colonel Benjamin Morris and his wife Roxana, donors of the Rhome townsite. In 1940 the congregation moved to a remodeled building that had been the chapel of an early Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Since the 1880s, members of the United Methodist Church have led in Rhome's development. (1982)