Knobbs Springs Baptist Church

The community this church serves took its name from three small hills nearby, the Yegua Knobbs, and has also been called The Knobbs, Knobbs and Gleam. A community of Wends settled here in the 1880s, and the place had a short boom: a post office named Gleam opened in 1889, and by 1896 there were three churches, two cotton mills and an estimated 300 people. The post office closed in 1906 and the town declined. By the 1930s only the school, a church, a cemetery and a few houses remained, and in 2000 the population was twenty.

What the plaque says

Knobbs Springs Baptist Church Knobbs Springs Baptist Church has served this area since the mid-1800s. Settlers first came here in the 1850s, establishing the community of Knobbs Springs, and in May 1860, 16 charter members formed a church. The congregation's first building was located across the road from Jeffries Cemetery and was also used as a school. In 1861, Knobbs Springs joined the Little River Baptist Association. In 1882, after the association's end, the congregation joined the Western Branch Association, which organized at the church. The church moved to a lot near the Lower Knobbs Cemetery and then in 1897 near Meeks Cemetery. By 1911, members started construction on a new sanctuary. In the 1930s, membership began to decline as residents moved to larger cities and towns to find employment, and in 1947, the church tore down their old building and erected a new, smaller one. The congregation persisted, and in 1972 held a revival which helped spur membership growth. To meet the needs of the growing congregation, the Texas Baptist Men retirees, under the leadership of Olen Miles, who played a significant role in the development of the church, constructed a new sanctuary; it was dedicated in 1979. The group later built an educational building, dedicated in 1988. Knobbs Springs Baptist Church has historically been a hub for the surrounding community. The congregation has also been involved in area baptist organizations and in missions on state, national and international levels. Today, the Knobbs Springs Baptist Church congregation continues to be a spiritual leader, reaching out to the local area and the world at large. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 18 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 21 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.

More markers nearby

• Moab Community — 5.4 mi
• Three Oaks (Goerlitz) Cemetery — 5.6 mi
• Pioneer Publisher and Printer David Ervin Lawhon — 5.7 mi
• McDade — 6.0 mi