Robert Cooke Buckner

Buckner's Paris years are only part of the Baptist work the plaque credits. The Handbook of Texas adds that in 1900 he joined a group of prominent Baptists, both Black and White, who founded the Dickson Colored Orphanage in Gilmer, and that he presided over its board from 1900 to 1905. He also helped found the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium, now Baylor University Medical Center, and led the Baptist General Association of Texas as president for twenty years. He died in Dallas in 1919 and is buried in Grove Hill Cemetery, not in Paris.

What the plaque says

Robert Cooke Buckner (January 3, 1833 - April 9, 1919) Outstanding Baptist minister. Born in Tennessee, he moved to Texas 1859, and became pastor of this congregation in 1861. A new church building was erected here, and through his guidance, the congregation grew. First Baptist "Ladies Aid" group in Texas was founded here, 1861. In 1873, Dr. Buckner resigned to edit the publication "Religious Messenger." In 1877, he led in founding a Baptist orphans home. Under a large, shady oak, he gave the first dollar for the Dallas home, which, on the base he laid, has grown today into the well-known Buckner "Benevolences." (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 1.1 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.
• Eiffel Tower — 2.2 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

• Paris Fire Department — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Paris — steps away
• Paris Public Schools — steps away
• The Paris Fire, 1916 — steps away