Kate Crawford and Zachary Clay Taylor

Wikipedia's account of Anne Luther Bagby puts the Taylors in a larger story. William and Anne Bagby, Texas Baptists, began preaching in Brazil at Santa Barbara, a settlement of former Confederates, and moved to Salvador, Bahia, after trouble there. In 1882 they and Zachary and Kate Taylor created what the account calls the first Baptist church for Brazilians in Salvador. It was formally organized that October with five members: the four missionaries and a priest named Teixeira whom they had converted. Kate and Anne wanted Bible classes but waited.

What the plaque says

Kate Crawford and Zachary Clay Taylor The Taylors were among the earliest Baptist missionaries to Brazil. Zachary Clay Taylor (b. 1851) was a pastor preparing for missions when he met Kate Crawford (b. 1862), a Salado school teacher. They wed Christmas Day 1881 at the then named Salado Baptist Church of Christ. After the ceremony, the church commissioned the Taylors as missionaries to Brazil. They arrived there in 1882 and helped organize a Portuguese-speaking Baptist church. Besides other duties, Kate translated evangelistic materials from English to Portuguese. She died in 1894 from cancer. Zachary later remarried and stayed in Brazil until 1909, when he returned to Texas. He drowned during the 1919 hurricane that devastated Corpus Christi. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 15 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 23 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 25 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.

More markers nearby

• Davis Mill — steps away
• Home of Orville Thomas Tyler — steps away
• Salado Creek — steps away
• Salado — steps away