Little Bethel Baptist Church

Little Bethel's second building was bought by women. After the first church burned, Delia Kimbrough, who returned to Ladonia in 1935, joined Mary Cook and Grady Jane Woods in March 1938 to buy land at 120 South Wilson. County records show the price was $5, paid to Tilford Higgins. They built a white wooden church thirty by forty feet with board pews and outdoor restrooms. The nineteen charter members of 1912 included Nettles, Lomacks, Johnson and Marshall families. For many years the congregation was mostly women and children, with one male member.

What the plaque says

Little Bethel Baptist Church Little Bethel Baptist Church was established in the community of Stall Cup, outside of Ladonia, on April 14, 1912. At that time, there was no nearby church for African Americans living in southeast Fannin County. Around 1932, Deacon John Marshall moved Little Bethel to Ladonia because poor road conditions were affecting the church's membership. In 1938, several members purchased the current property and a church building was constructed to replace the previous structure that had burned down. For 100 years, the Little Bethel Baptist Church has served, and continues to serve, Ladonia and surrounding communities with charity, leadership, and spiritual guidance. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 18 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 22 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 28 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.

More markers nearby

• Ladonia — 0.5 mi
• Bethel Lodge No. 134 A. F. & A. M. — 0.6 mi
• Ladonia Cemetery — 0.6 mi
• First Baptist Church of Ladonia — 0.8 mi