According to a Facebook message I received from the church, the sanctuary was built in 1910. The church has an active
Facebook page which links to their
website, where there are some interesting historical photographs -- and a few paintings -- and some history repeated from the 1977 Texas Historical Marker at the cemetery behind the church:
The first families in this community migrated from Alabama in the 1850s. Originally known as Avant or Avant Prairie, the settlement became Sunshine after the Sunshine Methodist Church moved here from Harrison Chapel in 1870.
In 1869 W.S. Compton, one of the early settlers, and D.A. Self, local merchant and dentist, donated land for this community cemetery. First burial was that of a young girl, Missouri A.E. Humphrey (1869-1871). Other early graves date from the yellow fever epidemic of 1873.
The town was renamed in 1885 when Dew Post Office opened. The name "Drew" was requested to honor a local resident, but postal officials misread the application. A market center for cotton farmers of the area, Dew had a cotton gin and several stores. Rural delivery replaced the Dew Post Office in 1909.
A land donation by Wiley Black in 1901 enlarged the graveyard, which lies adjacent to Dew Methodist Church where funeral services are held. About 1912-13 a cemetery association was organized. Descendants and community residents gather at annual Memorial Day observances to tend the 11 and 1/3 acre site. The 1000 graves here include many from the 1918-19 influenza epidemic.
Dew itself is an unincorporated community in Freestone, TX, with maybe seventy residents or so. Some listings note the church with a mailing address in Teague, which is nearly nine miles from here.
An interesting "shades of gray" positioning of headstones here can be seen in the gallery, with a headstone for members of the Black family (Robert and Maybe) to one side, a headstone for two members of the White family (Charles and Gloria) to the other, and between and behind them, the headstone for Mary Lancaster Gray. Robert Black was the son of Wiley Black, referenced above as the donor of additional land for the cemetery in 1901.
While the historical marker references the first burial, the second was that of a teenager, L. Franklin Rennels, whose headstone notes him among so many Alabamans to travel to Texas. Broken but repaired, it reads:
L.F. Rennels,
Born
in Marion Co. Ala.
April 9, 1852
Died
Freestone Co. Texas,
March 26, 1872