Admiral Baptist Church

The town that gave this church its later name rose and fell quickly. Admiral got its post office in 1897, with early settler Henry L. Buchin as postmaster, and in the first quarter of the twentieth century it grew into a farm town: two churches, a gin and about 100 people in 1900, two general stores and a blacksmith by 1914. After the post office closed in 1929, the community declined quickly. In 1950 it had one business and twenty-five residents. By 1989, the Handbook of Texas says, only the cemetery and an empty church building were left.

What the plaque says

Organized in 1881 with nine charter members, this church first served pioneer settlers of the Admiral community. Services were conducted in a family log cabin, under brush arbors, or in local schoolhouses until members built a sanctuary here near the turn of the century. Known early as Shiloh Baptist, the congregation adopted the community name in 1905. The church disbanded in 1968, but the building and nearby cemetery remain as reminders of Admiral, a settlement that once included stores, doctors, a gin, school, and post office. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986. Supplemental Plate: The Historic Admiral Baptist Church building, located east of the cemetery, was destroyed in a fire set by vandals in 1993.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 19 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.
• Frontier Texas! — 27 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 33 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.

More markers nearby

• Callahan City — 3.4 mi
• Callahan City Cemetery — 3.5 mi
• Belle Plain — 4.0 mi
• Site of Belle Plain College — 4.0 mi