First Baptist Church of Bells

Bells began as Dugansville. The Handbook of Texas says the community took the name of the pioneer Dugan family, from 1871 to 1878, and became Bells in 1879, perhaps in reference to the area churches. Daniel Dugan had settled the neighborhood in 1835, but town building waited for the Texas and Pacific and Katy railways in the early 1870s. The town grew up south of the tracks, incorporated in 1881, and by 1900 had two schools, a number of churches and a weekly paper, the North Texas Courant.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Bells Originally known as Bell Plain Baptist Church, this congregation was organized in 1879 at the home of J. A. Lindsay. The first services were conducted in the Bailey Junction Schoolhouse by the Rev. Isaac Reed. In 1884, soon after the school building burned, the members constructed a sanctuary on property donated by A. T. Wilson. They worshiped there as the Baptist Church of Christ until about 1896, when high winds destroyed the structure. Later that year the congregation built a chapel at this location. The present sanctuary was completed in 1954. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 12 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 — 12 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 — 18 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.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 22 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

• Savoy Methodist Church — 2.8 mi
• Antioch Baptist Church — 2.9 mi
• Fort Warren — 3.5 mi
• Old Cedar Community — 6.4 mi