Bazette Baptist Church and Cemetery

Bazette began on the Trinity River and had to leave it. The Handbook of Texas says settlers arrived around 1845, then moved to higher ground because of floods, and that a Baptist preacher named Bazette ran a ferry there. A post office opened in 1847, closed in 1851 and reopened in 1874. The town's largest recorded population, 400, came in 1896, with three general stores, a gristmill, three churches and a school. By 1949 only about twenty residents remained, though 1980s highway maps still showed a church and a cemetery.

What the plaque says

Bazette Baptist Church and Cemetery The early farming settlement of Bazette, named for a Baptist preacher, developed before the Civil War. In 1881, postmaster and store owner William Ellison (1840-1906) deeded land at this site for the community's Baptist church. First known as Liberty Missionary Baptist Church, the congregation may have formed as early as the 1860s. In 1890, the deacons purchased adjoining land from J. L. Jennings for the establishment of a cemetery. The oldest marked grave is that of Jhonnie Hiett (1881-1891). The church and cemetery serve as reminders of the area's early history. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 13 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Prairie Point Church and Cemetery — 1.1 mi
• Josiah Martin Daniel — 4.0 mi
• Kerens — 4.0 mi
• Kerens Presbyterian Church — 4.2 mi