First Baptist Church of Crawford

Baylor's training of ministers has a history of its own. The Handbook of Texas says the original Bible department became Baylor Theological Seminary in 1905, then independent as Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1908, and moved to Fort Worth in 1910. Baylor then built a new Bible department for undergraduates under Josiah Blake Tidwell, and the present religion department descends from it. The Handbook does not mention Crawford, so it does not say whether the plaque's pastor Josiah B. Tidwell is the same man. The plaque dates its Baylor divinity program to the 1950s.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Crawford W.B. Bowen and P. O'Keiffe organized this congregation on August 3, 1878, with about a dozen original members. O'Keiffe served as the first pastor and A.F. Damon and Phil Noland were the first deacons. The church met in the Crawford schoolhouse in its early years. Brother J.M. Wright, who pastored here for two different terms in the 1800s, led the church to join the Leon River Baptist Association. The congregation struggled with membership in its first years, but in 1884 a revival resulted in 45 baptisms and 23 additions by letter to increase the church to 80 members. After transferring to the McGregor Baptist Association, First Baptist Church of Crawford joined the Waco Baptist Association in 1890, where it has been a member for more than a century. Brother J.M.B. Gresham became pastor in 1893 and began work on the first meetinghouse for the church at 5th Street and Avenue D. Brother Gresham was also pastor at the rural communities of Coryell, Patton and Stampede. The one-room church sanctuary built at this site had curtains to divide the building into classrooms. Brother M. Hale oversaw construction of a new church building in 1923, which served the congregation for more than 40 years. Groups including the Baptist Young People's Union, Women's Auxiliary and a Girls' Auxiliary organized over the years to extend community outreach. The church's evangelical work has been aided by nearby Baylor University; George W. Truett conducted a revival here while a Baylor student in the 1890s, Josiah B. Tidwell served the church in 1913, and a formal program to train Baylor's divinity students here began in the 1950s. Since early in Crawford's history, the church has been a spiritual and community leader. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 14 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 17 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Bosque Museum — 19 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 19 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Crawford — steps away
• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 0.2 mi
• Crawford — 0.2 mi
• Crawford Schools — 0.3 mi