First Baptist Church of Bartlett

Bartlett had four churches and about 300 people in 1884, when the cotton trade was young. Its Baptists then paid for their brick sanctuary of 1930 in six years, through the worst of the Depression, while the town shrank around them. Cotton prices fell, and the Bartlett Western railway closed in 1935. The Handbook counts 1,873 people and ninety-five businesses in 1931, then about 1,668 people and seventy-five businesses by 1940. Against that, members raised the full cost themselves and burned the building note on December 13, 1936.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Bartlett Originally known as Pecan Grove Baptist Church, this fellowship was organized in 1873 by the Rev. M.V. Smith, The Rev. H.I. Kimball, and the Rev. G.W. Baines, great-grandfather of United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson. In 1884 the church was moved to Bartlett from the Pecan Grove community (3 mi. W) and the congregational name was changed. Members built a one-room frame sanctuary which was shared with a local Methodist fellowship during the 1890s. When the membership outgrew the facility a new wooden structure was built at this location in 1900. The property here was donated to the fellowship by German immigrant J.E. Pietzsch (1844-1924) and his wife Margaret (1848-1929), pioneer area settlers and members of St. John's Lutheran Church. Continued growth led to the construction of a larger sanctuary here in 1930. Built by the Brownwood firm of Moore and Hale, the brick sanctuary was finished during the pastorate of the Rev. W.M. Lanier. Six years after completion of the structure, church members had contributed the funds to pay the total cost of construction. The event was celebrated with a special note-burning ceremony here on Sunday morning, December 13, 1936. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 18 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 20 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 21 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• The Round Rock — 25 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.

More markers nearby

• City of Bartlett — steps away
• Bartlett Grammar School — steps away
• Site of Booker T. Washington School — 0.3 mi
• First National Bank of Bartlett — 0.3 mi