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Looking
into Barker Reservoir
TE photo, March 2009 |
History in
a Pecan Shell
Also known as Bear Creek, Bear Hill and Letitia.
Named in 1884 after Henry
Addicks, the town's first postmaster, the community had actually been established
years earlier by German immigrants. In 1891 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad
came through the area, although there had been a previous railroad that extended
to Alleyton around the time
of the Civil War. In 1879 the Bear Creek German Methodist Church was established.
Addicks
and the tiny communities around it were destroyed in the 1900
hurricane that destroyed Galveston.
After rebuilding, the population was still just a mere 25 people in the mid 1920s.
In 1940, when construction began on the Addicks Reservoir, the town had
a population of 200. Most homes were moved or demolished and the residents resettled
nearby. The town was absorbed into the general population of Houston.
The original settlers are interred in the Addicks Bear Creek Cemetery (Highway
6 and Patterson Road).
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Bear
Creek Methodist Church
TE photo, March 2009 |
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Historical
Marker TextBear
Creek Methodist Church and CemeteryGerman
immigrants settled in the area surrounding the junction of Langham and Bear Creeks
in the 1840s. Settlers traveled to nearby churches for Sunday services until about
1879 when seven charter members established the Bear Creek German Methodist Church.
The congregation initially met in members' homes. The church was subsequently
made a mission of the Rose Hill Methodist Church near Tomball.
In 1890 a small church building was erected near the Hillendahl Family Cemetery.
The site proved to be poorly drained and often inaccessible, and in 1902 the congregation
moved the sanctuary here on three acres donated by Fred and Katherine Brandt.
A part of the acreage was laid out as a cemetery. Christine Backen's burial in
1904 was the first recorded here. The cemetery is still active and is maintained
by the Addicks Bear Creek Cemetery Association.
A summer storm destroyed
the sanctuary in 1915 but by the end of that year a new church building had been
erected. Area flooding in 1935 resulted in the construction of the nearby Addicks
Reservoir in 1940 and the subsequent removal of the church to another site about
1.7 miles south of here. The congregation changed its name to Addicks United Methodist
Church in 1968. |
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| Bike
path around Barker Reservoir. TE photo, March 2009 |
| Bike
path. TE photo, March 2009 | |
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