First Baptist Church of Lubbock

When Lubbock won the county-seat election of March 10, 1891, its first public buildings were the courthouse and the jail, and the jail did double duty. Miss Minnie Tubbs taught the town's school there, and by the summer of 1891 Quakers, Baptists and Methodists were all holding regular services in the same building. The Lubbock Leader, the town's first newspaper, began publication on July 31 that year. Within three years Lubbock had six lawyers, as many stores, a dentist, three land agents, a livery stable and two hotels.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Lubbock Organized in 1891, the First Baptist Church congregation met at the county jail until 1901, when a small church building was built at 13th Street and Avenue G. The church's first pastor was the Rev. J. R. Miller. The Baptist Women's Missionary Society and the Board of Deacons provided leadership during the congregation's early years. Charitable projects were funded by box suppers, ice cream parties, and quilting bees. The congregation called its first full-time pastor, the Rev. B. F. Dixon, in 1905. During his tenure the first parsonage was built and a baptistry was added to the church building. Membership increased in 1925 when Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) opened. Personnel from Lubbock Army Air Field (later Reese Air Force Base) and South Plains Army Air Field were welcomed to the church during World War II. By 1951 the congregation worshiped at the present location on Broadway and Avenue V. First Baptist Church outreach activities have included missions, radio and television programs, a deaf ministry, a child development center, Oriental and Spanish language ministries, and active involvement with the Southern Baptist Convention. 1991

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Ranching Heritage Center — 1.2 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
• Buddy Holly Center — 1.3 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
• American Windmill Museum — 2.4 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.
• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 3.0 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.

More markers nearby

• St. John's United Methodist Church — 0.4 mi
• Home Management House Program, School of Home Economics — 0.4 mi
• Texas Tech Alumni Association — 0.6 mi
• The Fujita Scale — 0.7 mi