History of First Presbyterian Church of Commerce, Texas
In 1880, worshipers of several denominations in the "little village of Commerce," who during the 1870’s had held services in the small log school house in the 1500 block of today's Pecan Street, completed a Union Church building. The land, at the southeast corner of Washington and Live Oak streets, site of today's Jones Funeral Home, was donated by Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Wren. For several years. separate small Bap
tist, Methodist, and Disciples of Christ congregations shared this building.
It was here in November of 1888 that a group of seventeen charter members, organized and led by the Reverend J.C. Grow (the pastor for part of his time at Sulphur Springs) as commissioner for the Paris Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (known also in those days as the Southern Presbyterian Church) united to form a congregation for the First Presbyterian Church of Commerce. Commerce at the time was a small village of approximately eight hundred people and had been incorporated only three years.
In 1892, after the Methodists had moved to a new building of their own, Dr. Debos Taylor (dentist and ordained Presbyterian Minister) and elder Henry C. Barker (leading hardware and implement merchant in Commerce), bought the Union Church building, paying $200 to each of the four churches. Construction began on a new building for the Presbyterian Church on Church Street.
Having outgrown the old building on Church Street, in 1912 the congregation began construction of the present brick building on the corner of Monroe and Caddo streets. This was completed in 1913.