Downsville Baptist Church

The Handbook of Texas says William Woods Downs owned this land in the 1850s and used enslaved people to work it. After the Civil War he gave each family a house and some nearby land, and former slaves founded a Baptist church in the community in 1866. A post office named Price opened in 1890 and was renamed Downsville that year for Downs and his son John Wesley. In 1896 the county listed a one-teacher school for seventy-three White students and a Mount Pleasant school for 126 Black students. The post office closed in 1907.

What the plaque says

Downsville Baptist Church This congregation was organized on May 6, 1894, by elder A.J. Moore and 19 members of the Robinson Baptist Church (3 miles NW). Later that year 39 year new members joined the congregation during a summer revival. A sanctuary and schoolhouse were erected here on land deeded by E.J. Webb, W.C. Crunk and Fannie M. Crunk in 1896. Over the years a number of church facilities, including a fellowship hall, town hall, and Sunday School, have been built at this site. The church shares its facilities and religious services with a number of communities in the area. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Armstrong Browning Library — 7.1 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 — 7.8 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 — 8.0 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 — 8.3 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

• Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church — 1.3 mi
• Fletcher Cemetery — 2.6 mi
• Saint John United Church of Christ — 3.2 mi
• Zion United Church of Christ — 5.7 mi