First Baptist Church of Mt. Calm

J. Frank Norris was about twenty when he pastored near here. Wikipedia says he became pastor of Mount Antioch Baptist Church at Mount Calm in 1897 and entered Baylor the next year; the marker puts his ministry about 1900. His family had bought land near Hubbard in the late 1880s. He later led First Baptist Church in Fort Worth for forty-four years and became the leader of Texas fundamentalism. In 1926 he shot and killed lumberman Dexter Chipps in his church office and was acquitted on grounds of self-defense, although Chipps was unarmed.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Mt. Calm In 1878, under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. J. J. Riddle, members of the Mt. Antioch Church organized this congregation. At that time Mt. Calm village was located at present Old Town. In 1884, with the coming of the St. Louis and Southwestern Railroad the church was moved to this site. The fellowship built a new church house about 1900, during the ministry of the Rev. J. Frank Norris (1877-1954). In 1940 a fire destroyed that building. The Mt. Antioch Church, having declined over the years, merged in 1949 with the Mt. Calm membership. In 1954 this structure was completed. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 20 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.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 20 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 20 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 20 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.

More markers nearby

• Mt. Calm Methodist Church — steps away
• Col. Leonard Williams — 2.4 mi
• Birome — 6.1 mi
• Town of Penelope — 7.4 mi