Tennessee native James Madison McCloud (b. 1845) served with an Alabama cavalry unit during the Civil War. In 1881 he moved to Texas with his wife Ruth Elizabeth (Sampley) and children. Shortly after settling in the Bryson vicinity in the spring of that year, he established a church at Cottonwood Springs (3 miles east), which became the Bryson United Methodist Church. A farmer and preacher, McCloud served for fifty-three years as a Methodist circuit rider in Northern Texas and Southern Oklahoma. He died in his home at Bryson in 1934. (1981) Incise on back: Dedicated by the following grandchildren: E. C. McCloud, W. L. McCloud, Grace Reynolds, and O. M. McCloud