William and Mary Turner moved from Dallas County to a 300-acre farm near here in 1856. According to local tradition William soon built split log benches at his home for his neighbors' use as a site for study and worship. By year's end they had formed a Methodist Society called the Willow Springs Class. By 1861 the Rev. S.D. Sansom was serving as local elder. The community took the name Zion about 1873 and the church changed its name to Zion Methodist Church. In 1887, after Eli Smith and J.C. Brownfield gave land for a townsite named Smithfield, the church became Smithfield Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The congregation's first sanctuary, erected on land donated by Eli and Sally Smith in 1912, was replaced in 1935 with a structure built of masonry donated by descendants of William and Mary Turner. The congregation changed its name to Smithfield Methodist Church in 1939 and achieved sufficient membership by 1945 to retain its first full-time minister. The congregation, renamed Smithfield United Methodist Church in 1968, erected a new sanctuary here in 1974. The church continues to offer worship and outreach programs to the community and remains an important institution in northeast Tarrant County.