Uvalde Methodist Church

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Uvalde Methodist Church. Now, picture Texas in 1856. The town of Uvalde had barely found its footing, and the Reverend Thomas Myers was already showing up, organizing a congregation.

That took a certain kind of nerve, because at that time, this was the western limit of the Methodist Ministry in the entire state of Texas. Not near the edge. The edge.

The last stop before the ministry ran out of road. Some of the earliest families who signed on with that congregation, the Dillards, the Pulliams, the Nunns, the Burchfields, the Robinsons, and the Griners, those were frontier people. And H.W.

Griner, one of that very family, stepped up to serve as the first Sunday school Superintendent. Now, before they had a proper sanctuary, this little congregation held services wherever they could find a roof and a floor. The courthouse.

The school building. The park. Can you imagine gathering your faith under an open sky?

Well, they did, and they kept coming back. Around 1859 or 1860, that changed. A sanctuary went up on Garden Street, on land deeded by Reading Black, the founder of Uvalde himself.

That's the kind of detail that tells you something about the standing this congregation had earned. Then, about 1882, another sanctuary rose on Getty Street, on a site conveyed by the G.T. Nunn family, a name that had been with this church since nearly the beginning.

And still the congregation kept growing, kept building. The present sanctuary went up in 1907 and 1908, with a building committee that meant business. D.W.

Barnhill, Harry Hornby Senior, and J.G. Smyth oversaw the whole effort. That building was something, because just one year later, in 1909, the West Texas Annual Conference held its session right there.

And then again in 1916. When a church hosts a conference not once but twice, it's safe to say it's earned a certain weight in the community. The marker puts it plainly: the early congregation brought stability, leadership, and spiritual values to an unsettled frontier.

That's not small. A frontier doesn't settle itself. It takes people willing to show up, build something, and keep seekin those goals year after year.

That's the story of the Uvalde Methodist Church, from the western edge of a ministry with nowhere left to go, to a cornerstone of everything that came after.

What the marker says

The Rev. Thomas Myers organized this congregation in 1856, soon after the town of Uvalde was founded. At that time, this was the Western limit of the Methodist Ministry in Texas. Early members of the Uvalde congregation included the Dillard, Pulliam, Nunn, Burchfield, Robinson, and Griner Families. H.W. Griner served as first Sunday school Superintendent. The church held services in the courthouse, the school building, and the park until a sanctuary was built about 1859-60 on Garden Street on land deeded by Reading Black, founder of Uvalde. Another sanctuary was built on Getty Street about 1882 at a site conveyed by the G.T. Nunn Family. Construction of the present sanctuary in 1907-08 was overseen by Building Committee members D.W. Barnhill, Harry Hornby,Sr., and J.G. Smyth. The 1909 and 1916 sessions of the West Texas Annual Conference were held here. The early congregation brought stability, leadership, and spiritual values to an unsettled frontier. Through the years the members have continued to seek those goals and enlarge their scope of service. 1985