First Baptist Church of Gilmer

The congregation's early records have vanished, and the 1946 county history says the early history went with them. What it does record is the buildings. The first church stood in a log building on Montgomery Street, then a frame building a block north of the square on Titus. A brick church followed, with vari-colored window panes in ornate designs. Its pews, costing $1,700, were bought by the Women's Missionary Union and moved into the present building in 1910, where they were still in use. An annex was added, and a $3,000 organ was installed a few years before 1946.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Gilmer First congregation was organized in a log cabin in 1846 as the Gilmer Missionary Baptist Church of Christ. In 1854 the congregation consisted of 22 members and the Rev. J. M. Griffin served as pastor. Church membership grew to 100 in 1869 and in the early 1870s the first church building was erected about one block north of this site. Walter Grimmer organized the first Sunday School in 1878. A Ladies Aid Society was organized in 1895 and in 1896 a new brick sanctuary was erected. The first full-time pastor, the Rev. J. L. Mahan, was called in 1904. The congregation purchased land here in 1909 and in 1911 a new sanctuary containing their first baptistry was erected. That year the church, with a membership of 410, became a charter member of the Pittsburg Baptist Association. A parsonage was built here in 1918 and an education building in 1925. The church was renamed First Baptist Church of Gilmer in 1929. Over the years the church has remodeled existing structures and added new buildings to its property to serve its growing congregation. The congregation has grown with the community and continues to support missionary activities and serve the area with a variety of outreach programs. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 24 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• Daingerfield State Park — 25 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 25 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Tyler State Park — 26 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• The Looney School — steps away
• Upshur County, C. S. A. — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Gilmer — steps away
• Cherokee Trace — steps away