Stephen Scallorn

Born in St. Mary's County, Maryland, Scallorn married Polly McClure in 1810 and practiced medicine in Haywood County, Tennessee. The Hopewell Baptist Church he helped organize in April 1839, with Asiel Dancer and the missionary Z. N. Morrell, is recognized as the first Baptist church west of the Colorado and the first in Texas to ordain a pastor and administer baptism. He later founded a church on Mulberry Creek in Fayette County. He and his brother William were reconciled on February 23, 1887, Stephen's hundredth birthday; Stephen died that Christmas Eve, William on New Year's Day.

What the plaque says

Stephen Scallorn Maryland native Stephen Scallorn (1787-1887) lived in Kentucky and Tennessee, where he practiced medicine and was active in the Primitive Baptist Church, before moving to Texas. He was attracted to the Republic by the favorable accounts of his oldest son John Wesley Scallorn, who had served with the Texas Army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Stephen Scallorn and his brother William came to Texas with their families in 1837-38 and settled in the vicinity of Plum Creek in Fayette County. There they were instrumental in the formation of the Hopewell Baptist church, an important early church in Texas. Later divided by doctrinal disagreements, the brothers helped form separate fellowships. Two of Scallorn's sons, John Wesley and Elam, died in defense of the Republic. Members of Capt. Nicholas Dawson's outfit, they were attacked by Mexican forces near San Antonio in 1842 and killed. Scallorn remained active in church organization and helped establish an Upton congregation at the age of 98. Twice married and the father of 14 children, he lived in Bastrop County with his son Francis. Stephen Scallorn died at the age of 100 and was buried in the nearby Scallorn Family Cemetery. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 6.8 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 18 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 26 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 29 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.

More markers nearby

• Young School House and Cemetery — 1.7 mi
• The CCC at Bastrop State Park — 6.7 mi
• Felipe Enrique Neri Baron de Bastrop — 6.7 mi
• Smithville — 6.7 mi