First Baptist Church of Oglesby

Oglesby was first called Hilltop because it sat at the highest point above sea level on the railroad. The Handbook of Texas says the community was founded in 1882, when the railroad came, though settlers had lived in the area since the mid-1850s. The name soon changed to Oglesby, for William Oglesby, who gave land for the townsite. Joseph J. Hackney became postmaster in 1883. A year later there were gristmills, cotton gins, three churches, a district school and 100 residents. During World War II a naval ordnance plant between Oglesby and McGregor gave area residents jobs.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Oglesby This church traces its history to 1893 when a revival was held in Oglesby. The official founding date of this congregation is September 1896. J.M.B. Gresham was elected as the first pastor of the church, which held services once or twice monthly until 1937. The first church building, destroyed by fire in 1913, was replaced in 1914. Additions were made over the years to accommodate the church's activities. The congregation supports traditional spiritual programs and has a long history of missionary outreach and community involvement. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 6.5 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 24 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.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 24 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.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 25 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Eagle Springs Baptist Church — 5.2 mi
• Coryell County — 6.1 mi
• First Baptist Church of McGregor — 6.2 mi
• McGregor — 6.3 mi