First Baptist Church of Devine

Irrigation remade the town the church grew up in. Devine had 504 residents when it incorporated in 1904. In 1915 the Medina Irrigation Company began delivering gravity-flow water from Medina Lake to the surrounding farms, vegetables, corn and small grains replaced cotton, and the population doubled to 1,000. The area became known for white corn milled for tortillas, and later as the largest Spanish peanut shipping point in South Texas. Natural gas and oil were found in the 1920s, and after the 1940s the town's nearness to San Antonio and its bases drew new residents: 4,016 by 1988.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Devine This congregation, founded in 1882 by the Rev. D. Johnson, the Rev. C.B. Hukill, and 35 charter members, was the first church organized in Devine. The congregation met under a prominent oak tree in town and in a local school building before erecting a sanctuary about 1890. A second sanctuary was constructed in 1912 and a third was built at this site in 1951. Devine's Calvary Baptist and Bethania Baptist Churches began as missions of this congregation. Past guest speakers include former Texas Governor Thomas M. Campbell and several former Presidents of Baylor University. 1993

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Landmark Inn State Historic Site — 15 mi
  A store and stage stop at the Medina River ford in Henri Castro's Alsatian town, with a mill race under the ground and rooms you can still rent for the night.
• San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 30 mi
  Four working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 30 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 30 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.

More markers nearby

• Judge Thomas L. Devine (1820-1890) — steps away
• Spanish Exploration in Medina County — 2.5 mi
• Robert Lee Bobbitt — 6.4 mi
• City Hotel — 13 mi