Missionary Union Baptist Church

For decades the congregation met in someone else's basement. Organized in 1833, in the days of slavery, it held Sunday and Wednesday afternoon services below First Baptist Church, and it was still there when it was chartered in 1867. The church's own history names Deacons Caesar Barry and Peter Evans and early pastors Jack Hinton, George Powell and P. Eckford. The Rev. Jesse Boulden, who led it after emancipation, organized the Mount Olivet Association in 1869 and helped form the General Baptist Association of Mississippi. In 1871 the church bought the site where it stands.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — 0.7 mi
  The 1875 Episcopal rectory where Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, moved to Main Street in the 1990s and now Columbus's welcome center and a National Literary Landmark.
• Waverley Mansion — 6.8 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 15 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge — 27 mi
  A 48,000-acre refuge of bottomland forest and lakes in Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston counties, rebuilt from worn-out farmland, with red-cockaded woodpeckers, alligators and winter eagles.

More markers nearby

• Queen City Hotel (Blues Trail) — 0.2 mi
• Joshua Lawrence Meador — 0.3 mi
• Walter "Red" Barber — 0.3 mi
• MUW Founders — 0.4 mi