First Baptist Church of San Marcos

The academy grew out of a campaign that began in 1905. The Southwest Texas Baptist Conference established it in 1907 by matching $25,000 raised by San Marcos citizens, and an entering class of 200 students arrived on September 24, 1908. After the United States entered World War I, the federal government granted the school a junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps unit, and from then on all male students served in its corps of cadets. By 1936 the academy had twelve buildings on fifty-six acres valued at $400,000, teaching students from first grade through twelfth.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of San Marcos City's third oldest congregation. Pioneer in church-related education. Organized Oct. 25, 1857, by the Rev. Milton Caperton, a missionary. Charter members: J. J. Barbee, Mrs. Mary Barbee, Maj. and Mrs. William Barbee, Shadrack Dixon, Jonathon Ellison, Mrs. Hattax, Mrs. Claiborne Kyle (who, according to tradition, walked 6 miles to worship here). First resident pastor (1878) was the Rev. H. M. Burroughs. After meeting for years in borrowed or rented quarters, congregation erected first building of its own in 1881, under leadership of the Rev. Barnett Hatcher. Larger church buildings were erected in 1892 and 1902. Under its 1906-1914 pastor, the Rev. B. A. Copass, the church founded and opened (1908) San Marcos Baptist Academy-- an institution that is still prospering. After a destructive 1909 fire, a converted skating rink became the Baptist Tabernacle. Present church, completed in 1928, has been enlarged several times. During its first century, the congregation of First Baptist Church was host to programs featuring some internationally-known, popular orators, including U. S. Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey, presidential aspirant William Jennings Bryan, Evangelist George W. Truett, U. S. Senator Morris Sheppard, and others. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 4.5 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 11 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 13 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• Stringtown — 0.6 mi
• Pitts Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Wonder Cave — 2.6 mi
• King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road — 2.6 mi