Bethel Salter A.M.E. Church

Salter Chapel belongs to a denomination that could not operate in Texas before the Civil War. The Handbook of Texas says the African Methodist Episcopal Church was not permitted here, and its first missionary, M. M. Clark, arrived at Galveston in 1866. Many Black Methodists had worshipped in their enslavers' churches, and Clark set out to bring them into the AME fold. The first Texas conference met at Galveston in October 1868 and claimed 3,000 members and probationers. Cleburne's congregation formed nineteen years later.

What the plaque says

Bethel Salter A.M.E. Church Salter Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Cleburne in 1887 by the Goodwin and Sims families, with help from Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Fort Worth, and was named for Bishop Moses B. Salter (1841-1913). The first church building was built on East Chambers Street, followed by a sanctuary erected on Brazos Street in 1918. The Sanctuary was relocated here in 1926 on land donated by the Charles Alexander family with funding help from the Grand Lodge Colored Knights of Pythias of Texas. A community church was formed in Oak Hill south of Cleburne and formally recognized by the A.M.E. Conference of Texas in the 1940s. The church was named Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church. In 1943 a building was purchased for a sanctuary and moved to Oak Hill. Both churches had experienced a decline in membership, and officially merged into one congregation in 1988, named Bethel Salter A.M.E. Church. The aging sanctuary was torn down, and a new church building was constructed with the help of community volunteers and completed in 1992. The church continues traditional outreach programs and has as its creed "everlasting commitment to God our father, Christ our redeemer, and man our brother." (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cleburne State Park — 12 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
• Acton State Historic Site — 19 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 25 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 26 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.

More markers nearby

• Pioneer Texas Telephones — 0.3 mi
• First Baptist Church Of Cleburne — 0.4 mi
• Site of Old Picnic Grounds — 0.4 mi
• Cleburne Town Square — 0.5 mi