First Baptist Church, Sabinal

Sabinal's Church of Christ members founded a college on eight acres a mile east of town in 1907. Contractor S. T. Hutchinson built its two-story main building of Laredo brick, with six classrooms and a 300-seat auditorium. Students paid $3.50 a week for board, and tuition ran from fifty cents a week for primary pupils to a dollar for college courses. The first session opened on September 10, 1907, with 139 pupils, and enrollment peaked at 200 under Isaac E. Tackett. War, a depressed cotton market and drought closed the school on May 15, 1917.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church, Sabinal Since 1899, First Baptist Church has served the community of Sabinal. It began as Sabinal Missionary Baptist Church with eight charter members: William J.F. and Mary Lou Millikin; C. Manco and Martha E. Cullins; Mae Holme; Monroe and Sarah V. Dunlap; and Bessie Dunlap. Led by the Rev. Winter Green, the congregation worshipped once a month in its early years, meeting in the Progressive Campbellite Building and later the Wilson Theatrical Hall. Members completed construction of the first church facility at Tyler and Austin Streets in 1905. Membership grew steadily in the early years, and in 1927 the church moved to a new structure on U.S. Highway 90 (at present FM 127). First Baptist Church has a rich tradition of charitable service to others. Since its inception, members have focused on programs for children and the needy, also giving aid in times of crisis and supporting both foreign and home mission efforts. The congregation supported a local Spanish-speaking mission in the 1930s and in 1984 established a mission in nearby Concan that later developed as a separate church. The First Baptist Church of Sabinal has also been active in interdenominational activities in the community. In 1977, the First Baptist Church moved again, completing work on the current sanctuary. Today, it continues to provide vital leadership, emphasizing mission work on the international level while still serving locally to adress spiritual needs for residents of the Sabinal area. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Inge Historical Site — 20 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 21 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 21 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Garner State Park — 25 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.

More markers nearby

• Sabinal Methodist Church — 0.2 mi
• John M. Davenport — 0.6 mi
• Sabinal — 0.6 mi
• Site of Camp Sabinal — 1.0 mi