Bethel Baptist Church

A clipping in the Longview library's files, signed D. S. Snodgrass and dated May 16, 1874, describes how Bethel began. On June 6 a Black Baptist congregation was organized after a meeting led by Elder Richard Perry, who had come from Calvert and Shreveport. Eight letters of dismission were read and articles of faith and a covenant adopted. The next day twelve more joined by letter and twenty-six were baptized, many of them former Methodists. The congregation took the name Bethel, voted to acquire land for a meeting house, and called Perry as pastor.

What the plaque says

Bethel Baptist Church The Rev. Richard Perry and nine deacons organized this church in 1874. Services were held under a brush arbor on land donated by the Rev. Perry and his wife Betty until a sanctuary was erected later that year. A Sunday School was formed in 1875. A new church building was erected in 1884 and in 1890 a women's missionary society and a youth association were formed. A new sanctuary, built in 1906, was replaced by a fourth sanctuary erected here in 1956. A junior missionary society was organized in 1958. The church continues to serve the area's african American community. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 21 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 22 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• Longview Womack High School — 0.3 mi
• Site of James S. Hogg Newspaper — 0.3 mi
• 1919 Longview Race Riot — 0.4 mi
• Dalton Gang's Last Raid — 0.4 mi