East Shady Grove Baptist Church

The marker was erected in 1968 but could not be dedicated that year, because the church closed. The last conference, on May 19, 1968, drew eight members. They divided the funds: $100 each to East Shady Grove Cemetery, Leonard Cemetery and the new Baptist church in Leonard, $56.66 to Buckner Orphans Home, $25 to Indian Creek Baptist Church, and $140 for this marker. The congregation had met first in the Morrow schoolhouse in 1884, bought an acre for $25 in 1885, and paid $1,019 for the building dedicated in 1911. The Commission notes that nothing of it remains.

What the plaque says

East Shady Grove Baptist Church Organized Oct. 26, 1884, by 18 members who met at nearby school to found a missionary Baptist church. T. P. Reece was the first of 25 pastors here. The Sunday School was founded Feb. 22, 1885. Dedication of present church was July 16, 1911. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 14 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 21 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 24 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 36 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Dr. William Chamberlayne Jones — 2.4 mi
• Leonard — 2.7 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Leonard — 2.7 mi
• Valley Creek — 3.9 mi