It’s time to start your engines and make the scenic ride down historic Highway 21.
Historians record that in 1832, while traveling on horseback through the forests along Palo Gaucho Creek between San Augustine and his home, Colonel Samuel Doak McMahan stopped to pray and was soundly converted. He immediately began to seek a Methodist preacher who would come and preach to him, his family and his neighbors.
The first church building erected at McMahan Chapel was of logs, in 1837, which Rev. Littleton Fowler arrived in time to help build. After nine years of noble work in Texas, Fowler died on Jan. 29, 1846. In compliance with his request, he was buried beneath the pulpit of the Chapel.
The second building was erected in 1872; the third in 1900; and the present landmark Chapel was completed in 1949. All these buildings have occupied the same spot so that the grave of Rev. Fowler would not be disturbed.
McMahan Chapel was one of the first three Methodist Churches in the United States to be designated a “Landmark Site” by the General Commission on Archives and History.
McMahan Chapel is located 12 miles East of San Augustine on Highway 21, turn left on Spur 35.
Like other founding fathers of Texas, Sam Houston and Davy Crockett, Fowler got his start in life in Tennessee. He found the Lord early on and converted to Methodism at age 16 and became a preacher at age age 23. A year after Texas became independent the preacher was sent to the new republic to provide services to the souls of freshly minted Texians, following after brothers who had set out for the state and made their own mark in Texas and American history as a state senator and a judge.
Fowler’s goal to preach on Texas soil just a few years earlier had been illegal. Under Mexican rule Catholicism was sanctioned by the state and no other religion was to be practiced.
Families currently enjoy the historic facility, which includes a museum and events center. The grounds feature the Littleton Fowler Park, The Well Spring of Texas Methodism and the McMahan Chapel Cemetery.
