First Baptist Church

First Baptist's own history starts in the early Masonic Hall, where six charter members organized in November 1852 and called the Rev. J. R. Briscoe at $125 a year. The 1855 frame church cost $3,000, and the Episcopal church of Bonham was organized in that building. Missionary zeal ran through the pews: in 1901 pastor D. G. Whittinghill resigned to go to Rome as a missionary, and the schoolteacher Mary D. Willeford answered a call to China, where she served thirty-five years. The women's missionary society dated from 1881.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church Organized November 1852 under the Rev. J. R. Briscoe with six charter members. The first log church on this site doubled as the school. Cost of this lot-- then outside city limits -- was $50. Indian trail lay northeast. In 1855 a new frame church was built; baptisms were held in Saunder's pool on West 7th. Other denominations were also allowed to worship here. New churches were built in 1882 and 1921, the latter being dedicated by George W. Truett, noted evangelist. The present church was dedicated 1959 under the Rev. Jack M. Carson, pastor. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 2.2 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.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 24 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 29 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.

More markers nearby

• First Christian Church of Bonham — steps away
• Site of Steger Opera House — steps away
• Risser Hospital — steps away
• Confederate Commissary — steps away