Mount Olive Baptist Church

Black Baptist congregations in Texas had a statewide body by 1874, the Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention, which promoted missions and schools. Poverty kept it dependent for years on the American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York, which ran Bishop College to train Black ministers, while the convention supported Hearne Academy, Houston College and Guadalupe College. By 1890 it represented more than 110,000 Black Baptists. A plan in the 1890s to make Bishop College the flagship split the convention; dissidents formed the General Baptist Convention in 1893, and later disputes produced the Texas Baptist Convention in 1929.

What the plaque says

Mount Olive Baptist Church ORGANIZED IN SEPTEMBER 1902 BY REVEREND G. W. MERRIWEATHER OF SAN ANTONIO, THE MOUNT OLIVE BAPTIST CHURCH CONGREGATION FIRST MET IN A SMALL SCHOOLHOUSE LOCATED ON PASCHALL STREET. THE FIRST STRUCTURE WAS A SMALL, WHITE FRAME BUILDING BUT, AS THE CONGREGATION GREW, A LARGER, MODERNIZED BRICK BUILDING WAS CONSTRUCTED IN THE 1960s. IN ADDITION TO SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE IN THE COMMUNITY, THE MOUNT OLIVE BAPTIST CHURCH ALSO PROVIDED MUSIC LESSONS FOR THE YOUTH, EDUCATIONAL STUDY GROUPS, A MISSION CHORUS, A NUTRITION SITE FOR THE ELDERLY, TRANSPORTATION AND VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL. FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, THE CHURCH HAS STOOD AS A BEACON OF LIGHT IN THE KERRVILLE COMMUNITY. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 0.7 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 15 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 20 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 22 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.

More markers nearby

• The Famous Door Café — steps away
• Doyle Colored School — steps away
• Barnett Chapel Methodist Church — steps away
• H-E-B — 0.3 mi