First Baptist Church of Mart

Mart was Willow Springs in the 1870s and took its present name when it got a post office in 1880; the Handbook of Texas says residents chose it expecting a commercial center. The International and Great Northern finished its Marlin-to-Waco track shortly after 1900, and Mart incorporated in 1901. Banks followed in 1901, 1904 and 1909, and by 1914 the town had an ice factory, three gins, a cotton oil mill, two newspapers and about 3,000 people. The Depression ended passenger service, and the last track was abandoned in the late 1960s.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Mart The Rev. Thomas D. Suttle (1840-1900) and 18 Baptists assembled on April 28, 1878, under a large elm tree at the present site of Mart City Cemetery (1 mi. SE). There they organized the first church in the town of Mart, originally named Willow Springs. Near the tree, the fellowship built a church which also served as a schoolhouse. Burials in the adjacent cemetery began in 1880. During the pastorate of the Rev. B.F. Tatum (1853-1928), 1889-96 and 1899-1900, membership almost quadrupled. In 1893 the church moved to Navarro Avenue and in 1906 to the present location. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Fort Parker — 17 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 17 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 17 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 17 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.

More markers nearby

• Battle Cemetery and Community — 3.5 mi
• Kirk — 6.8 mi
• Friedens Evangelical and Reformed United Church of Christ — 7.2 mi
• Riesel — 7.2 mi