our history: THE GALBREAITH-PICARD BUILDING
The Treasure On
North Elm
A local funeral home’s chapel is a one-of-a-kind jewel
with 122 years of history and relevance.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY MEL W RHODES
M
When the Conference assigned
W.D. Bradford as pastor, the church
was unfinished and 110 members
strong. Though workers finished
construction during Bradford’s first
year, a debt remained. Enter J.R.
Couts — cattleman-banker and
founder of Citizens National Bank on
the Weatherford Square — and yet
another name change. Couts paid off
the debt and when his wife Martha
(a devoted practitioner of Methodism
and a member of Elm Street Methodist Church) died in 1894, the congregation renamed the church in her
honor.
Couts Memorial Methodist Church
conducted services at the North Elm
location until shortly before the 1953
sale of the late-Victorian edifice to the
three gentlemen intent on opening
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
to attend First Methodist downtown
and instead met in a home on Spring
Street. The worshipers petitioned
the Methodist Conference for a new
church, a request granted in November 1891 at the annual conference
in Corsicana. Spring Street Methodist
came into being.
The following year the church,
in order to better serve its north-side
congregation, moved to the corner
of North Main and West First streets.
The church became the North Main
Street Methodist Church. In 1893,
the congregation moved again, this
time to North Elm Street. After an
early 1894 tent revival on the corner
of North Elm and East First streets,
members voted to build their church
at the North Elm location, recasting it
the Elm Street Methodist Church.
MAY 2016
onday, March 1, 1954, marked
the beginning of a long-standing
business in Weatherford, Texas, one
whose doors remain open to this
day. Over 2,000 people attended
Galbreaith-Pickard Funeral Chapel’s
grand opening. The owners — John
and Robert Galbreaith and Lambert
Pickard — bought the property and
building located at 913 North Elm St.
in June of 1953 and had the required
remodeling completed in less than a
year.
For decades the building had been
a house of worship, a church built in
the waning years of the Victorian Age
by Methodists desiring a church close
to home. According to the Parker
County History book, several families
in the north and northeast sectors
of the city hadn’t the transportation
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