First Baptist Church of Smiley

The association the church helped form in 1921 shared its name with the best-known Texas Baptist of the day. James Bruton Gambrell, born in South Carolina in 1841, scouted for Lee's army, edited Mississippi's Baptist Record from 1877 and led Mercer University before coming to Texas in 1896 as superintendent of state missions. He edited the Baptist Standard from 1910, brought it under denominational ownership, taught at Southwestern Seminary and became the state convention's general secretary in 1914. He served four terms as Southern Baptist Convention president and died in Dallas on June 10, 1921.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Smiley George W. Colley, who established a home, gin, and grist mill on Smiley Lake (1 mile S) in 1879, arranged for the Rev. John Stringer to hold the area's first formal Baptist meeting in 1880. People from throughout the area attended the 3-week brush arbor meeting during which 117 people were baptized in Smiley Lake. Smiley Lake Baptist Church, organized in 1882 with 34 charter members, erected a sanctuary and organized a Sunday School. A new sanctuary was built in 1893 on two acres donated by F. P. and M. L. Colley. The congregation was renamed Smiley Baptist Church in 1894. In 1906 several church members established Calvary Baptist Church in the new railroad town of Smiley. In 1915 Smiley Baptist Church moved to a site in Smiley donated by Maggie Glover. The Smiley and Calvary Churches reunited as the First Baptist Church in 1916. In 1921 the congregation withdrew from the San Antonio Baptist Association and joined 12 other churches to form the Gambrell Baptist Association. Church membership grew and in 1949 a new church building was erected. A parsonage was built in 1962. The church continues to build on a tradition of Sunday School programs, women's group programs, Baptist instruction, and support of home and foreign missions. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gonzales Memorial Museum — 20 mi
  A 1937 Centennial museum for the Immortal Thirty-two who died at the Alamo, holding the small iron cannon Gonzales calls its Come and Take It gun and the Handbook calls a second one.
• Palmetto State Park — 23 mi
  Dwarf palmettos, bogs and a spring-fed oxbow on the San Marcos River, with CCC stonework from the 1930s, a swamp an hour from Austin and San Antonio.
• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 24 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Panna Maria — 27 mi
  The Silesian village on a plateau above the San Antonio River that claims the oldest permanent Polish settlement in America, with a church of 1878 and a ceiling found again in 2000.

More markers nearby

• Smiley United Methodist Church — 0.3 mi
• Old Smiley Lake and Townsite — 0.5 mi
• Community of Pilgrim — 7.1 mi
• Pilgrim Presbyterian Church — 7.2 mi