First Baptist Church, Bryan, Texas

The plaque follows the church's buildings. Its members also built a school. Texas Woman's College, proposed by pastor George B. Butler and layman T. R. Batte and sponsored by First Baptist, was chartered on July 13, 1905, and opened that September at East 26th Street and Washington Avenue with a dormitory for girls. By 1909 it was Bryan Baptist Academy for Girls, and boys were admitted the next year. Better transportation to the A&M College ended it in 1918, and the property was sold to Eugene Edge.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church, Bryan, Texas "Bryan Station, Brazos County, Nov. 21, 1866...I hope a better day is dawning, for last Sabbath a Baptist church was organized here and 16 members united with it," wrote Mrs. Sara Dodson. One block west of this site stood first house of worship, a two-story frame building that once was a tenpin alley and saloon; the first pews were planks laid on kegs. Rev. W.B. Eaves was the first pastor. The present church sanctuary, erected 1927, is seventh house of worship since its founding and third to be erected on this site since 1883. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 5.4 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 24 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 26 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 26 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• John N. Johnson — steps away
• Brazos County — steps away
• Harvey Mitchell — steps away
• Town Named for William Joel Bryan — steps away