First Baptist Church of Luling

Governor W. Lee O'Daniel spoke at the cornerstone laying in November 1939, early in his first term. A Fort Worth flour salesman, he had built a radio audience with his Hillbilly Boys band and won the 1938 primary outright, campaigning with the Ten Commandments and a Bible. Legislators laughed at the vaudeville air of his administration. He would edge Lyndon Johnson for the United States Senate in 1941. Luling Baptists, rebuilding after a fire, had a radio personality turned governor at their cornerstone.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Luling Seventeen charter members, with encouragement from the Rev. G. W. Lane, district missionary, organized this congregation on Dec. 3, 1875. Worship services were held outdoors and in the Masonic Lodge Hall until spring of 1876, when the first church building was erected on this lot donated by Thomas W. Peirce. A revival in the fall of 1876 increased the membership to 50. In 1939 a fire destroyed the sanctuary, education wing, and parsonage. Cornerstone for the present church building was laid on Nov. 13, 1939, with Gov. W. Lee O'Daniel delivering the dedicatory address. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palmetto State Park — 7.0 mi
  Dwarf palmettos, bogs and a spring-fed oxbow on the San Marcos River, with CCC stonework from the 1930s, a swamp an hour from Austin and San Antonio.
• 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.
• Gonzales Memorial Museum — 17 mi
  A 1937 Centennial museum for the Immortal Thirty-two who died at the Alamo, holding the small iron cannon Gonzales calls its Come and Take It gun and the Handbook calls a second one.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 22 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.

More markers nearby

• Edgar B. Davis, Oil Pioneer-Philanthropist — steps away
• City of Luling — steps away
• First Christian Church of Luling — 0.2 mi
• Episcopal Church of the Annunciation — 0.4 mi