The vestry of the Fourth Street Methodist Church (1887) stands at East 4th and Jones streets downtown. The church later became First United Methodist Church.
The vestry was “rediscovered” several years ago when a warehouse that had obscured it was torn down. The south wall abuts the Fort Worth Press (1921-1975) building (now a police department division headquarters).
A Sanborn map of 1889 shows the church and vestry. What current events might have been on the minds of congregants as they walked into their new church building in 1887? Luke Short shot Jim Courtright that year; Pearl Harbor became a U.S. naval base; Queen Victoria celebrated her first fifty years of ruling Britannia; the first Groundhog Day was observed in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Gottlieb Daimler’s first car made its first test run in Germany; construction began on the Eiffel Tower. Doc Holliday died, and, although it did not make the news, in the working-class Yorkville section of Manhattan, Sam and Minnie Marx welcomed the birth of their second son and named him “Leonard.” He would come to be known as “Chico.”
