First Baptist Church of Eddy

Eddy was called Marvin until the Katy railroad came through in 1882, when its post office took the name of Everett B. Eddy, a railroad division superintendent. The Handbook of Texas says that by the mid-1880s it had a gristmill, three general stores, two churches and a school, and by the early 1890s two hotels and a weekly paper, the News and Messenger. A private bank opened in 1901, became the First National Bank of Eddy in 1915, and closed in 1942. In 1928 Eddy and Bruceville joined in the county's first consolidated rural high school district.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Eddy Organized as Sage Chapel in 1875,this congregation moved its one-room frame sanctuary two miles east to the new town of Eddy in 1882. The church building also servedas a schoolhouse for the community, and the local Methodist congregation shared the facility until new Baptist sanctuary was dedicated on April 28, 1912, after two previous structures were destroyed by fire. This church has grown with the city of Eddy and continues to serve the community. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 13 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.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 15 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.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 19 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• 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

• Roy Bedichek — 0.8 mi
• Bruceville Baptist Church — 1.9 mi
• Site of Bruceville Methodist Church — 2.1 mi
• Martin Irons — 2.3 mi