First Baptist Church of Cameron

The Baptists organized in 1853, seven years after Cameron was bought and named, in a town whose nearest railroad was more than fifty miles away. The church is thirty-six years older than the town's lasting charter. Cameron tried to incorporate in 1856, 1866 and 1873, and each time the charter was allowed to lapse; incorporation finally held in 1889. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe reached town in 1881, and the Handbook of Texas puts the population at an estimated 500 in 1878, 800 in 1884 and 2,000 by 1892.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Cameron Itinerant ministers J. W. D. Creath and David Fisher organized this church in 1853. The Rev. T. M. Anderson became the congregation's first resident pastor in 1867. Membership was extended to the community's Mexican-Americans in 1914, and in 1919 the church joined the Milam Baptist Association. Church facilities have been expanded over the years to meet changing needs. First Baptist helped organize the Mexican Baptist Church of Cameron in 1925 and Battetown Baptist Church in 1945. The congregation is active in foreign missionary work and continues to serve the community. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 0.2 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.
• Calvert — 20 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 27 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.

More markers nearby

• First National Bank of Cameron — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Cameron — steps away
• Ben Milam — steps away
• Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg — steps away