First Baptist Church NBC of San Marcos

The congregation rebuilt after the Klan burned its first sanctuary, and the 1908 building at 219 Martin Luther King Drive became a gathering place for the Black community of the Dunbar district. After the church moved to Mitchell Street in 1986 the old building stood empty and decayed, and the city called it unsafe in 2009. A buyer planning demolition backed out in 2016 after learning its history, and Kurt and Kate Waldhauser bought it in April 2017. In October 2018 the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended local landmark status. One report dates the Klan fire to 1873.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church NBC of San Marcos In 1866 Rev. Moses Johns met with freedmen to organize the Colored Baptist Church Zion, San Marcos' first African American congregation. In 1872 the church became a charter member of the Guadalupe Baptist Association. That same year, the Ku Klux Klan burned the church's first sanctuary, located on Guadalupe St. where Tuttle Lumber Co. now stands. The church built a Victorian-style sanctuary on Comal (now MLK) Street in 1908 under Rev. G.F. Curry's leadership. The name First Baptist Church NBC (National Baptist Convention) of San Marcos was adopted in the 1980s. In 1986 the congregation moved to its new Mitchell Street sanctuary where the congregation continues to serve. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 1.7 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 13 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 16 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 17 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• Dunbar School — 0.2 mi
• La Sociedad Mutualista Cuauhtémoc — 0.5 mi
• Belvin Street Historic District — 0.5 mi
• Wesley Chapel A. M. E. Church — 0.5 mi