Wallace United Methodist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Wallace community, out in Van Zandt County, put down its roots in the 1840s. From those early days it grew into something a rural neighborhood could depend on, a genuine trading center, with a general store and a school anchoring the place.

That's the kind of town that earns its name on a map. Now, the schoolhouse did double duty for a good while, and that matters to this story. Because in 1889, the Rev.

W. D. Wheeler gathered eight charter members together and organized a Methodist congregation right there in that schoolhouse.

Eight people. You think about that number. Eight folks who decided that what this community needed, what it deserved, was a church of its own.

They worshipped where the children learned their letters, and they made it work. Then came 1910, and during the pastorate of the Rev. D.

S. Burke, the congregation finally got the building it had been growing toward. Four men stepped forward with the funds to make it happen.

W. H. Bailey, G.

J. Loughmiller, George Richards, and W. P.

Wallace. Their names are on the record, and rightly so. The present church building went up that year, a modest country church standing firm in the Van Zandt County landscape.

Now, the marker is honest about what came after. Rural population decreased. That's a quiet kind of pressure, the kind that has closed more country churches than any storm ever could.

But Wallace United Methodist Church maintained its heritage of service to the community. Started with eight members and a borrowed schoolhouse, and it kept on keeping on. Some things, it turns out, are harder to diminish than the math would suggest.

What the marker says

Settled in the 1840s, Wallace community grew into a rural trading center with a general store and school. This Methodist congregation, organized in 1889 by the Rev. W. D. Wheeler and eight charter members, met first in the schoolhouse. W. H. Bailey, G. J. Loughmiller, George Richards, and W. P. Wallace gave funds for the present church building, erected in 1910, during the pastorate of the Rev. D. S. Burke. Despite a decrease in rural population, this country church maintains its heritage of service to the community. (1976)