First Baptist Church of Katy

The schoolhouse where this congregation first met was the town school of a district ringed by one-room schools: Schlipf, Sills, Stockdick, South Mayde and Dischner. The Katy Independent School District formed in 1919 and had 17,000 students by 1989. Charter member W. P. Morrison, a grocer, became Katy's second postmaster. The farm town grew quickly around the church. Dr. J. M. Stewart and John H. Wright opened their drugstore in 1904, and Wright strung the first telephone lines and ran a water system. A private bank came in 1914, and the Katy State Bank operated from 1922 to 1932.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Katy On November 20, 1898, the Rev. T. L. Scruggs led the first official meeting of what would later become the First Baptist Church of Katy. Among the new congregation's first twelve charter members were W.H. Featherston, W. P. & Hattie A. Morrison and seven of their family and relatives. The Morrison and Featherston families did much to support the foundation and growth of the church, first named Zion Baptist Church. They met in the one-room Katy schoolhouse with several other denominations. The Rev. J. P. Durham, a circuit minister, was called as the first pastor. He visited once a month, alternating with the Methodists and others. In 1904 the congregation began to meet in a building erected by Katy Methodists. The Baptist congregation changed its name to Katy Baptist church in 1914 and erected its own building at a cost of $1,380. The Katy Baptist Church grew quickly with the rapidly expanding economy of the Texas Gulf Coast. A masonry building replaced the first worship center and the name first Baptist Church of Katy was adopted in 1948. Continued growth resulted in the addition of a much larger worship center and educational building in 1967. The church has contributed to worldwide missions as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention since 1905. Direct missions include an annual outreach in Mexico and the establishment of twelve mission churches in this area since 1946. The membership swelled to more than four thousand and the church relocated to a site just south of the original building as it celebrated its centennial in 1998. A white frame chapel was erected at the new site as a reminder of the first building and the original and continuing vision of the church. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 17 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• The Menil Collection — 25 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 26 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 26 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.

More markers nearby

• The City of Katy — 0.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Katy — 0.4 mi
• Barker Post Office — 7.1 mi
• Pittsville — 7.6 mi