DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Western Heights Church of Christ, out of Dallas County. Now, most churches get their start from a preacher who's been preachin' all his life. This one got its start from a man who'd spent a good deal of his life doing something else entirely.
The year was 1872. Brigadier General Richard M. Gano — born 1830, and he'd live all the way to 1913 — was asked by a fellow named Major B.
F. Robinson to come out and preach. Robinson and Gano were Civil War comrades, and when a man who rode with you in wartime asks a favor in peacetime, well, you don't say no.
So Gano preached. And the people came — settlers from De Soto, Eagle Ford, Jimtown, Lisbon, and Wheatland — five communities sending their people to hear one man speak. When the dust settled, fifty converts had been made.
Fifty. That is not a small number for a single preaching. That is the kind of number that starts something.
And it did. The Western Heights Church of Christ was founded that year, right out of that gathering. But here's the thing about a church that springs up in open country — it needs somewhere to meet.
For years, that somewhere was wherever they could manage. Homes. The Mt.
Airy Schoolhouse. The congregation made do, the way people in those years knew how to make do. Among the early preachers who served them was a man named Z.
E. Coombes. The marker doesn't linger on him long, but it remembers him.
And in the story of a congregation, being remembered is no small thing. Now, a church that meets in schoolhouses and parlors is always dreamin' of a building to call its own. The land came first.
W. R. Fisher gave the church a parcel in 1888.
Then J. A. Crawford gave another in 1890.
But land alone doesn't raise walls. For the lumber, the congregation turned to a woman named Mrs. Mattie Hord Crawford, and she went out and raised the money to buy it.
You want to talk about getting something done — there it is. With the land secured, the lumber paid for, the men of the congregation rolled up their sleeves and built it themselves. In 1890, they erected the first meetinghouse — white clapboard, standing clean and plain the way a Church of Christ building tends to do.
And here's where the story lands in a way that'll stay with you. That building they put up with their own hands in 1890? It's still standing.
Today it houses the church for the deaf and the Sunday School. A structure built by ordinary men out of donated land and hard-raised lumber, born from fifty converts and one preacher's favor to an old comrade — still serving, still standing, more than a century on. Some things are built to last.
This one knew it from the start.
What the marker says
Founded 1872 after Brig. Gen. Richard M. Gano (1830 - 1913) preached at request of Maj. B. F. Robinson, a Civil War comrade, to settlers from De Soto, Eagle Ford, Jimtown, Lisbon, and Wheatland, making 50 converts. Church met for years in homes or in Mt. Airy Schoolhouse. Early preacher was Z. E. Coombes. Land was given the church by W. R. Fisher (1888) and J. A. Crawford (1890); Mrs. Mattie Hord Crawford raised money for lumber. Men of congregation erected (1890) first meetinghouse of white clapboard that now houses the church for the deaf and the Sunday School.