First Baptist Church of Kennedale

Kennedale was a young town when the church took its land. The Handbook of Texas says settlers came in the 1860s or 1870s to a mineral-water well, a post office opened in 1884, and the townsite was surveyed in 1886. Oliver S. Kennedy, who platted it and gave his name to it, donated every other lot to the Southern Pacific Railroad to induce it to build through, and the line later put a station and section house there. The church's 1887 deed came a year after the survey. In 1896-97, 108 pupils shared one teacher.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Kennedale Believed to have been organized before 1887, this congregation met for worship in a local schoolhouse and baptized new members in nearby creeks and a small lake to the tune of "Shall We Gather at The River." Land was deeded to the Kennedale Baptist Church in 1887; in 1895 the church joined the Tarrant County Baptist Association. The Kennedale community tabernacle, shared with area Methodists, was used for larger socials and revivals. By 1896 the congregation was installed in a one-room structure of its own with the Reverend G. W. Green as pastor. A parsonage was built on church property in 1938, and by 1940 an addition to the original one room building was required. A new two-story Austin stone structure with tall stained glass windows and a balcony in the auditorium, built in 1954, was destroyed by fire in 1959. Undaunted, church members raised $3,585.65, sold the parsonage, and erected a fellowship hall. By 1961, a new church building faced east. The First Baptist Church of Kennedale continues a proud tradition of over 110 years of community service with such programs as the Women's Missionary Union, established in August 1903, and a taped ministry for shut-ins. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 10.0 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 11 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 11 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 12 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Everman Cemetery — 2.9 mi
• Tate Cemetery — 3.7 mi
• Barron Field — 5.0 mi
• Dalworthington Gardens — 5.4 mi