Palestine Missionary Baptist Church

The brick church on Convent Street dates to 1953 and is described by architectural historians as a streamlined neo-Gothic. Dark red brick is trimmed with limestone, and the sanctuary is raised above an undercroft of ancillary rooms, a plan borrowed from late nineteenth-century Protestant churches. That raised floor is why the front has such an impressive flight of steps. The narthex stands apart from the nave behind it, under its own roof and a small bell cote. The congregation itself was organized in 1868.

What the plaque says

Palestine Missionary Baptist Church Twenty-one former slaves gathered together at the corner of Convent and Depot streets on June 27, 1868, and formally organized the First Colored Baptist Church in Victoria County. It was renamed Palestine Missionary Baptist Church on September 11, 1868. That same month property was conveyed for the town's first freedmen's school, named Brauns Colored School. Early Baptist worship services were held in Brauns school and at Frazier Colored Methodist School at the corner of Convent and River Streets. Under the leadership of the Rev. Mitchell Harrison, the members of Palestine Missionary Baptist Church built their first sanctuary between 1871 and 1873. It was replaced in 1886 with a larger structure built on the corner of Convent and Navarro Streets. A new brick church building was erected at the corner of Convent and Depot streets in 1953. Throughout its history, this church has maintained programs with an emphasis on educational, social, civic, and missionary responsibilities. Members of the church have played an important role in community activities, and over the years four additional congregations were formed from the Palestine Missionary Baptist Church fellowship. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — 0.5 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.9 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Webster Chapel United Methodist Church — steps away
• Site of Southern Pacific Railroad Depot — 0.2 mi
• Goldman Ginnery — 0.2 mi
• The Victoria Advocate — 0.3 mi