Bedias First Baptist Church

The plaque's founder had been in Texas only weeks when he went to war. Anderson Buffington, a South Carolinian licensed to preach in Nashville, crossed the Red River by ox wagon in January 1836 and settled at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He fought at San Jacinto as a private in William Kimbro's company, and that year organized Washington Baptist Church No. 1, which the Handbook of Texas calls the first missionary Baptist church in Texas; it dissolved in 1838. In 1841 he printed a paper called the Tarantula, was ordained in October, and went out as a home missionary to Montgomery County.

What the plaque says

Bedias First Baptist Church The Rev. Anderson Buffington (1806-91), a Baptist missionary who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, organized this church in 1848. Services were held in a small schoolhouse until the 1850s. In 1859 the congregation built this structure, which also served as a school until about 1903. Members of this fellowship helped start several other Baptist churches nearby. The congregation survived a split in 1913, but later dwindled because of population changes. The last regular service was held here in 1965. Restored in 1974, the building was deeded to the Bedias Cemetery Association. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 20 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 27 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.

More markers nearby

• Town of Bedias — 0.4 mi
• Sarah Bradley Dodson — 4.0 mi
• Lake Grove Community — 8.1 mi
• Katy Holland McDowell Treadwell Cobb — 8.9 mi