First Baptist Church of Josephine

The old bell's last duties are recorded in a 1938 newspaper column. The church's huge bronze bell had called worshippers from the frame building, and in 1936 it was hung in a frame beside the new church to be kept as an antique. It rang once that year, for Texas' hundredth birthday. By 1938 it served as a memorial to departed members, with flowers planted around it: a lily for Mrs. J. T. Wherry, a rose for Mrs. Coffman, an evergreen for Mrs. Eva Tarrant. The Sunday school then averaged 150.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Josephine In 1888, Mr. And Mrs. Sam Tarrant recruited several local families to meet with Baptist Missionary Rev. Petty at the Reed's chapel Methodist Episcopal Church school house to organize a Baptist congregation. W.M. Wolfe served as the church's first pastor. That summer, Henry Money conducted a revival meeting under a brush arbor that attracted 27 new members. For several years, church services were conducted at the school house. Around 1890, the congregation built a wooden sanctuary with a vestibule and bell tower. In 1911, Rev. Money dedicated the congregation's new three-story, brick-clad sanctuary. The new sanctuary had curved wooden pews with end carvings, dark wood walls and stained glass windows. In the 1920s, an annex and a tabernacle were added to the church complex. The dirt-floor tabernacle hosted two-week long revival meetings, complete with piano accompaniment. Ella Smith served as the church organist for more than seventy years. In the 1930s and 1940s, Josephine Churches held services on alternative Sundays, which allowed congregants to visit each other's churches after Sunday school. The church provided temporary high school classrooms in the 1936-37 school year when the Josephine school was rebuilt. On July 12, 1964, the congregation dedicated its new sanctuary, designed by Dallas architect Adam Bliss. A brick parsonage was added in 1966. The church bell from the first church and the stained glass windows from the 1911 church were preserved in a display on the lawn. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 12 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 13 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 19 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 24 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.

More markers nearby

• Josephine — steps away
• Central National Road of the Republic of Texas — 2.0 mi
• Community Independent School District — 3.2 mi
• Empire Masonic Lodge — 3.9 mi