| Marker Text |
Early Methodist services in this area can be traced to 1835 when a camp meeting was held in Egypt. According to local church historians, the Wharton congregation began meeting in 1859 and was officially organized in 1865. Members built a church on Caney Street in 1885, and in 1898 moved to a new site on Fulton Street. Their first sanctuary there was destroyed in a 1909 storm, and its replacement was lost to fire in 1925 along with the church's early records and possibly those of Egypt's original Methodist congregation. Wharton's first ecumenical Vacation Bible School was held at First Methodist Church in 1930. The congregation relocated to this site in 1972 into a structure designed to blend old and new traditions. Methodist churches in Glen Flora, Lane City, and Newgulf merged with the Wharton church in the 1970s and 1980s. (2000) |
