First Baptist Church of Kyle

A famous Baptist preacher spent his last years in Kyle. Z. N. Morrell, the traveling missionary nicknamed Wildcat, lived with R. J. Sledge and died there on December 19, 1883, at the age of eighty. He was buried in this church yard, and in the mid-1940s his body was moved to the State Cemetery in Austin. R. J. Sledge also served on the 1880 committee that chose the church's site. After a fire destroyed the building in August 1940, the congregation met in the old city hall until a new sanctuary was dedicated in 1948.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Kyle Founded at Mountain City, 1872. Original pastor: the Rev. J. C. Tally. A dynamic congregation, this church within two months of its origin licensed (and later ordained) D. A. Porter as a minister; in 1879 demitted 26 members to form church nearby; in 1881 moved here and was renamed. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 7.3 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 14 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 16 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Barton Springs Pool — 20 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.

More markers nearby

• Katherine Anne Porter — steps away
• John Wheeler Bunton — steps away
• Kyle Auction Oak — steps away
• Kyle — steps away