Bay City Methodist Church

The Bay City Methodist Church congregation began in 1870, when circuit-riding ministers visited people living along the Colorado River at Red Bluff. Norman Savage (1826-1879), a church elder, served the small congregation, and Thomas W. Rogers was its first minister. When Bay City was surveyed in 1894, the congregation relocated and bought one of the town’s first lots. By 1897, it had built Bay City’s first church structure, a frame building with a steeple and bell, which also served as a Union church for other denominations in town. In 1904, the congregation purchased land at Fourth Street and Avenue H, and the original church building was later sold to the Bay City School System. Services were then held in the courthouse and in a building on the square until a temporary open-air tabernacle was built. After additional land was acquired in 1906, a new sanctuary was completed in 1909 during the pastorate of A.S. Whitehurst. The church’s fifth building was erected in 1958 and dedicated on March 30 of that year, and it has remained part of Bay City and Matagorda County history for more than a century while continuing to serve the community.

Bay City, Texas · United States