Cedar Grove Baptist Church

Cedar Grove now stands in Satin, a place with several names. The Handbook of Texas says it was Laguna, then Cedar Point for the native cedar shipped out around 1900, and finally Satin, reportedly after a railroad employee, with a post office from 1917. Once the cedar was cut, the area became prosperous cotton land. Black residents were 41 percent of Falls County in 1880 and 32 percent in 1930, the Handbook reports. The congregation's first name, Buhl's Quarters, came from the plantation where it met in 1865. By 1924 sharecroppers had swelled it to 250 members.

What the plaque says

Cedar Grove Baptist Church Newly emancipated blacks assembled on August 20, 1865, to form a congregation at Col. Ruben Buhl's plantation on the Brazos River (2 1/2 Mi. NE). The sixteen charter members named their fellowship Buhl's Quarters Baptist Church and met in a log cabin with the Rev. Joe Moore as their fist pastor. The Brazos River area often flooded, and in 1885 the congregation moved one mile west to higher ground donated by Col. Edward J. Gurley. The frame building there was named Rock Dam Baptist Church after the new site. According to local tradition, members were called to regular and special services by a bugle blown by brother Mose Wells. In 1890 Col. Gurley gave the church a bell that announced activity at the site. In that year the church listed almost 100 members, and the name was changed to Cedar Grove Baptist Church after the venerable trees shading the sanctuary. By 1924 membership had grown to 250, due primarily to the influx of sharecroppers on the surrounding farmland. By the early 1940s, however, land around the church was being stripped for gravel beds. In 1945 the congregation acquired this site in Satin and built a new church in 1946 under the leadership of the Rev. Hogan Guy, still using the 1890 bell. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Armstrong Browning Library — 14 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 15 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 15 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 16 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Home of George Morgan — 5.2 mi
• Old Settlers and Veterans Association of Falls County — 6.5 mi
• Mooreville Cemetery — 6.9 mi
• Fletcher Cemetery — 7.2 mi