First Baptist Church of Claude

The congregation was born into a busy little town. The Handbook of Texas counts four churches in Claude during the 1890s, along with two saloons, two blacksmith shops, a livery stable and J. M. White's three-story Palace Hotel, then the largest in the Panhandle. When the school district was organized in 1891, children attended classes in the Methodist church until a schoolhouse was built. Baptists in the county soon took on higher education as well: in 1905 Charles Goodnight transferred Goodnight College to them after the Methodists declined it, and it ran until 1917.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Claude Organized on May 18, 1890, by 19 charter members, with the Rev. B. E. Hure as moderator. The Rev. Count C. Storts was the first resident pastor. The congregation worshipped in the Presbyterian church building until 1899, when a frame sanctuary was built (1/2 block south) on property donated by L. P. Greer. A second structure, of brick, was erected on this site in 1918. The present facility was constructed and dedicated in 1971. In a pioneer environment, this church body served as an uplifting force to settlers of Claude and surrounding ranches and farms.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gem Theatre — 0.2 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Carson County Square House Museum — 16 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Lighthouse Trail — 20 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.

More markers nearby

• Park Named for William A. Carroll, M.D. — steps away
• Early Sheriffs of Armstrong County, 1890-1926 — steps away
• Armstrong County Jail — steps away
• Charles Howard Roan — 0.2 mi