The First Baptist Church of Lexington

One of the four elders who organized this church in 1855 was among the busiest Baptist preachers in Texas. J. W. D. Creath came from Virginia as a missionary and became the second pastor of the Baptist church at Huntsville. In 1850 the Baptist State Convention sent him across the state as its general agent, alongside the missionaries Noah T. Byars and P. B. Chandler. He kept at the work for some thirty years, much of it around San Antonio, and in 1872 he and J. H. Fant organized the First Baptist Church of Beaumont.

What the plaque says

The First Baptist Church of Lexington The Rev. E. E. Lee of the nearby Prospect Church inspired Elders John Claybaugh, J. W. D. Creath, D. Fisher, and J. G. Thomas, with nine charter members, to organize this church in Jan. 1855. The original building was erected later that year. The Rev. J. G. Thomas was the first pastor. Sunday School was founded in 1866. Prospect Church disbanded in 1949, and members joined the Lexington Church, which has built five successive houses of worship, has belonged to five regional Baptist associations, and has been served by twenty-nine pastors. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 20 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 21 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.
• Bastrop State Park — 27 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.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 30 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.

More markers nearby

• Lexington Schools — steps away
• United Methodist Church of Lexington — steps away
• Town of Lexington — steps away
• Lexington Masonic Lodge No. 138 — 0.2 mi