First Baptist Church of Palmer

Palmer is named for a Houston physician and railroad stockholder, D. S. Palmer, the Handbook of Texas says, not a local founder. The Houston and Texas Central arrived in 1872 and the town became a shipping point for cotton and grain farmers; a post office branch opened in 1874. By 1885 about 250 people and 28 businesses were there, among them a hotel, a bank, a school and two steam gristmills and gins. Until separate churches were built, Methodists, Baptists, Disciples of Christ and Cumberland Presbyterians all met in the Cumberland church. Palmer incorporated in 1890.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Palmer The Rev. T. H. Durham preached at the organizational meeting of this Missionary Baptist Church on Nov. 17, 1873. Charter members included Lucinda Crawford, Susan and John Nixon, and Elizabeth and James Perkins. Worship services were originally held in the members' homes. By 1891, this Baptist fellowship was sharing a Union Church building with three other denominations. The present frame structure, built in 1900-1901, has been periodically enlarged and modernized. Five persons from this congregation have been ordained into the ministry. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 11 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 22 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 25 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 25 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• First Christian Church of Palmer — 0.3 mi
• Bristol School — 6.2 mi
• Old Lake Dam — 6.4 mi
• Sokol Karel Havlicek Borovsky — 6.9 mi