Caney Baptist Church

Kirvin grew up around the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway, which reached the area in 1905. The Handbook of Texas says the town was established about 1906 and named for Judge O. C. Kirvin, who donated the land for the railroad. A school opened in 1906 and the post office in 1907, with George B. Everett as postmaster. Incorporated in 1911, Kirvin had three weekly newspapers and a Woodmen of the World lodge of more than 125 members. Its population, estimated at 800 in 1914, had fallen to 288 by 1925, and the school merged with Wortham's in 1949.

What the plaque says

Caney Baptist Church Hopson Burleson (1806-82) and others in this congregation settled this area in the 1830s. The church was organized before 1858 and met in homes or in nearby schoolhouses. The Rev. E. J. Browne ministered to this fellowship for many years beginning in the mid-1870s. Called "Tehuacana" for a nearby creek, the church shortened its name to "Caney" by 1884. Oliver Carter (1801-76), Gus A. Sessions (1827-1909), County and District Judge Oliver Kirvin (1875-1924), and other leaders of the community have been members here. The church's first sanctuary, built in 1896 on land donated by Gus Kirvin, is still in use. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 9.5 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 19 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 22 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 22 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

• Homesite and Burial Place of General Joseph Burton Johnson — 4.1 mi
• Cade Cemetery — 5.6 mi
• Birdston Community and Cemetery — 7.6 mi
• Birdston Valley — 8.5 mi