Dorchester County · Marker 18-32
Murray United Methodist Church
1216 Orangeburg Rd., Summerville vicinity
Front inscription
Tradition holds this Methodist congregation organized around the end of the Civil War and initially worshipped under a brush arbor. By the 1910s members built a wood frame church at this site. They also opened Murray School, a public school for local Black children. It was later known as Murray-Branch and located 1 mi. N on Mallard Rd. The school closed in 1953.
Reverse inscription
Murray United Methodist Church was named after a member of the local Murray family, who provided the congregation’s first place of worship. The first church at this site was later brick-veneered and still stands. In the mid-1970s members began building a new church south of the old one. After several years of work, it opened for worship in 1977 and remains in use today.