First Baptist Church of Bowie

Fannie Potter's History of Montague County began as a book for the county's homes and was cut down to serve as a supplementary reader in its public schools. She wrote that such a study would lead young people to look with greater reverence on the early settlers. The Austin publisher E. L. Steck issued it in 1913, 191 pages in three eras: Immigration, Organization and Progress. Her sketches of Indian raids were condensed for school use, and she thanked fifteen friends and neighbors by name.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Bowie FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF BOWIE On December 24, 1882, Baptist ministers H.M. Burroughs and W.A. Mason, a missionary from the Baptist General Convention, met with fourteen local Baptists to organize the first Baptist Church at Bowie with Burroughs as its first pastor. To celebrate their new church, the congregation sang "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" From 1883 to 1902, the congregation worshipped in the masonic lodge building, also known as Rosser's school for its weekday usage, located at the corner of Pecan and Lindsay Streets. Purchased from the masons in 1886, that building burned in 1902. The congregation rebuilt on the site, only to see the new building burn in 1909. The next church building lasted until 1943 when the newly renovated structure burned. The congregation consecrated a new white brick sanctuary on Easter Sunday in April 1944. In 1966, the church campus expanded to include an education building. Members worshipped in the 1944 church until 1981 when a new sanctuary on the corner of Tarrant and Lindsay Streets was dedicated. At that time the 1944 sanctuary became the fellowship hall. The third church pastor, J.C. Ward, preached at as many as seventeen churches in the north Texas circuit, sometimes being paid in eggs, chickens, and flour. In the early twentieth century, church member and author Fannie C. Potter wrote histories of both Montague County and the church. From its inception, the church's congregation focused on missionary work, a focus that engendered several other local Baptist churches and community missions, including the multi-denominational Bowie mission. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 21 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 27 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.
• Wise County Courthouse — 27 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 29 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.

More markers nearby

• City of Bowie — steps away
• First National Bank of Bowie — steps away
• M. Johnson Poultry Ranch — 0.5 mi
• Montague County — 0.7 mi