Fulton Community Church

Frank Walker's congregation belongs to an old American type, the community church. Such churches date from the mid-1800s and grew where towns had more denominations than they could support, shifting loyalty from distant headquarters to the town itself. Their first national body formed in 1923. In 1950 a white council led by Roy A. Burkhardt and a Black council led by Joseph M. Evans met at Lake Forest College in Illinois and merged as the International Council of Community Churches, which it calls the largest interracial merger of American religious bodies to that time. Membership in it is voluntary.

What the plaque says

Fulton Community Church Before the growth of fishing and tourism industries, Fulton was a community of only about 200 settlers. Although Sunday schools met in town, residents had to travel to Rockport for worship services. In 1943, Frank Walker, visiting the area on a fishing trip, preached to a gathering in Fulton; he resigned a position in Fort Worth and moved here to organize a church. The next year, members erected a sanctuary. This nondenominational congregation grew and became a vital community institution. In 1983, members supplemented their old sanctuary with a new structure. Today, the church continues to serve Fulton, Rockport, Lamar, and the surrounding area. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 0.5 mi
  A French Second Empire house of 1874-77 on Aransas Bay, paid for with hides and tallow, with gas lights, central heat and hot running water no other house nearby had.
• Goose Island State Park — 5.8 mi
  A bayside park between St. Charles and Aransas bays, home of the Big Tree, the state champion coastal live oak, thought to be more than a thousand years old.
• Port Aransas — 16 mi
  The fishing town at the north end of Mustang Island, reached by a free state ferry that crosses the ship channel day and night, with a university marine lab begun in a one-room shack.
• Aransas National Wildlife Refuge — 22 mi
  Blackjack Peninsula's refuge on San Antonio Bay, winter home of the only wild migrating flock of whooping cranes, which fell to about fifty birds and now numbers over five hundred.

More markers nearby

• Site of Marion Packing Co. — steps away
• Fulton — 0.2 mi
• Fulton Volunteer Fire Department — 0.4 mi
• Home of George W. Fulton — 0.5 mi