Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church

Scurry's name carries a wartime death. The Handbook of Texas says residents asked for a post office branch and submitted the name Scurry for Scurry Dean, who was killed in the Civil War; postal service began in 1883. A grist and cotton mill had drawn a church and school community since the mid-1840s, and the arrival of the Texas and Pacific in the 1870s made the place a shipping point for farmers. By 1914 it had three churches, a school and a dozen businesses, including a bank, a weekly newspaper and a movie theater.

What the plaque says

Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church Organized in 1860 during the Civil War era, this is one of the oldest active churches of Kaufman County. It was originally located at Mt. Olive Cemetery (1.5 mi. W) in a one-room log cabin which was also used for a school. The Rev. E. S. Colthorp served as the first pastor. The congregation moved here in 1896 to the growing railroad town of Scurry. The first building at this site, on land donated by D. L. Ford, was shared with other denominations and a school. A 2-story structure was built in 1918 and the present sanctuary was completed in 1968. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 15 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Fair Park — 28 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 29 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 29 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• Kaufman County Poor Farm — 4.9 mi
• Rosser Depot of the Texas Midland Railroad — 5.8 mi
• First United Methodist Church — 6.2 mi
• Mrs. William P. King — 6.4 mi