First United Methodist Church

Pasadena was a name on a map and a land developer’s dream when Will and Katie Bailey and their son Will, Jr., moved from Ennis to Pasadena in 1896 to be closer to family.  Katie’s sister, Mary Jane, and her husband Robert Guinn and daughter Katie lived in Deepwater.  Will’s mother Martha and stepfather Josiah Rawlins soon followed.

These families were the solid citizens that would help to build a town.  They were church-going people.  They attended the non-denominational Union Congregation in Deepwater, where a Presbyterian minister preached.  Then in 1896 with the help of Peter E. Nicholson, a Methodist minister who was in the Texas Conference as early as 1877 and who in 1905 was appointed to the Genoa circuit, they formed a Methodist “Society” in Deepwater that met in their homes.  Their ministers were either local preachers or supply preachers from the conference, usually young men just beginning their careers and assigned to circuits.