As our Texhoma United Methodist Church will soon be celebrating our
100th anniversary, I have been asked to provide some of the local church
history for the news letters during the coming year.
I immediately ran into a mystery! At the time of planning for our present
church building in 1950, an early history of the church was written by the
oldest living charter member, Mrs. C.C. Reed. Mrs. Reed had turned the
first shovel of earth at the ground breaking for the old red brick Church,
and she turned the first shovel full of dirt for the new Yellow brick church
42 years later. In her history, she said that the church was organized in
the dug out hone of the Monroes ten miles northwest of Texhoma on June 1,
1904. Some other of the early members were the Sweet family and the McAdams
families, and the organizing minister was the Rev. W.O. Essary of the Goodwell
Circuit. They later met in the Pumpkin Flat and Sunnyside school houses in
that area. We have always accepted this as the start of the Methodist Church
in Texhoma. BUT, recently the first membership book of our church was
rediscovered, and it lists the first 6 members of the church as J.M.
Watterbarger, Lea Hardin, George and Anna Spilman, Jennie Vaughn, and Iva
Turner, and gave their dates of membership as Sept. 6, 1903. So I guess you
can take your pick as the starting date of our church. In the membership
book, it lists the receiving minister as W.B. McKeam of Stratford, and I
wonder if perhaps this Stratford minister rode a circuit here for a brief
time and tried to start a Methodist congregation. It is written in on the
same page in pencil. Pumpkin Flat, so perhaps these members later rode out
to Pumpkin Flat to meet with the Methodist congregation there served by the
Goodwell circuit rather than being served by the Stratford circuit. Other
early ministers, also from the Goodwell Circuit were C.R. Jones and J.N.
Tinkle.
I do know a bit about some of these early members. J.M. Watterbarger
was the patent owner of sections 20, 21, 22, &, 23 of Block 1, Shennan County,
Texas, in Dec. 1901, section 20 became the location of Texhoma, Texas. He
and his wife, and the Sam McAdams family were listed as one of the first
four families to settle in Texhoma. And Jennie Vaughn was the Mother of Mrs.
A.Y. Ingham, and the Vaughns were also very early settlers in Texhoma. Iva
Turner was the wife of early Texhoma, Texas promoter W.A. Turner who built
the house in 1907 now owned by the Ron Murphys.
The membership book lists 14 additional members added in the year 1905
and 11 more members added in 1906. It then starts the membership over under
the heading of Texhoma in 1907. It was in 1907 that the congregation was
supposed to have moved into the town of Texhoma and started worshiping 2
Sundays a month at the Community Church, a white frame church located where
the present day Baptist Parsonage is now. The Baptist conducted services
there 2 Sundays a month also and the Presbyterians had the 5th Sunday.
Additional ministers during this period were M.L. Latham, Rev. Southard,
R.C. Taylor and J.A. Trickey. The Community Church was dedicated as a Baptist
Church in 1908, and at that time the Methodist started planning and building
their own church, our old red brick church. It was not completed and services
started there until 1911. In the interim years, the congregation met in
different store buildings in town.
Centennial Celebration Schedule
Our Centennial History, Part II
Our Centennial History, Part III
Our Centennial History, Part IV
Our Centennial History, Part V
Our Centennial History, Part VI
Our Centennial History, Part VII
Our Centennial History, Part VIII
Texhoma's Location and History
Texhoma, Oklahoma/Texas Home Page