Mt. Canaan Baptist Church

Mt. Canaan's story sits inside a county whose Black share of the population fell for a century. The Handbook of Texas gives the figures: African Americans were 28 percent of Lamar County in 1860, 23 percent in 1900 and 19 percent in 1960, with the sharpest decline in the 1950s. By 1984 the share was 15 percent, the lowest since the Civil War. The entry offers no causes for the drop. The plaque says the congregation, founded in 1886 in the TP community, continues to serve its historic community.

What the plaque says

Mt. Canaan Baptist Church Following emancipation, several Paris black free men and women formed informal congregations to practice their new spiritual rights. These former slaves found Baptist theology, with its egalitarian notion of redemption and informal nature of worship, especially appealing. Mt. Canaan Baptist church originated in temporary prayer gatherings held in the African American community at the area of Chisum's Ranch, a neighborhood in northwest Paris. When the homes were demolished to make way for a new railroad, the displaced residents settled in southern Paris next to the cottonseed oil mill, compress, and cotton processing plants. This new African American neighborhood, called the TP community because of its proximity to the Texas & Pacific Railroad, was where Rev. Sam McCarley formally established Mt. Canaan Baptist Church in 1886. The railroad and the booming cotton industry employed many blacks in the area. Worship services were held in members' houses until the current church was built in 1900 under the leadership of Rev. J.B. Adkins. Mt. Canaan catered to the marginalized African Americans of the TP community, including mill workers, cotton ginners, and teachers at nearby Bankhead Elementary School, the only school in Paris for African American students. In 1939, the congregation purchased more land and remodeled the church. More renovations followed in 1970, including a baptism annex, cement steps, and a back porch. Despite these additions, the building itself remains largely unchanged. Mt. Canaan Baptist Church continues to serve its historic community. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Evergreen Cemetery — 0.3 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.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Eiffel Tower — 1.9 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 22 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.

More markers nearby

• Origin of the Paris Fire of 1916 — 0.3 mi
• Burial Site of John S. Chisum — 0.8 mi
• Robert Cooke Buckner — 0.8 mi
• Paris Fire Department — 0.8 mi