The Rev. William M. Tryon

The college Tryon helped charter could have carried his own name. Judge Baylor and others wanted it called Tryon University, believing Tryon the prime mover among Texas Baptists, but Tryon wanted it named for Baylor. Their charter petition went to the Texas Congress on December 28, 1844, and was approved February 1, 1845. Tryon's road began in New York, where the often sickly boy tailored to support his widowed mother; his father descended from the Loyalist governor William Tryon. He was the second missionary the Home Mission Society sent to Texas, after James Huckins.

What the plaque says

The Rev. William M. Tryon (March 10, 1809 - November 16, 1847) William Milton Tryon of New York City lost his father at the age of 9. At 17, young William was baptized. He and his mother moved to Georgia in 1832 where William was licensed to preach. He attended the Mercer Institute and was ordained as a minister in 1836. Tryon was pastor of five churches in Alabama and married Louisa Higgins in 1840. In 1841 the Rev. Mr. Tryon volunteered to go to Texas for the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Tryon became a circuit rider in southeast Texas, reviving the church at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He was instrumental in Texas Baptist affairs, beginning the first of five terms as moderator of the Union Baptist Association in Texas. He suggested the formation of the Texas Baptist Education Society and, with Robert E. B. Baylor, drafted the charter for a Texas Baptist college. Tryon served as chaplain of the Texas Senate from 1843-1845, and became the first president of the Baylor University Board of Trustees in 1845. On July 21, 1845, Tryon became the second missionary pastor of the First Baptist Church of Houston and was soon its first resident pastor. The membership, which had no church building, numbered only twelve. Tryon raised the money to erect a brick edifice on donated land at the corner of Travis Street and Texas Avenue. The completed structure was dedicated in May 1847. By the end of the summer sixty-nine new members had joined the congregation. William M. Tryon died of yellow fever in November 1847. He was interred in the churchyard. Years later, when the property was sold, his remains were transferred to Glenwood Cemetery. (1998) Incise on back: Project Sponsored by the New Covenant Department, First Baptist Church

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.9 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.0 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 2.1 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• The Menil Collection — 2.1 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• James S. and Alfred T. Lucas — steps away
• Colonel Benjamin Franklin Terry — steps away
• Anson Jones — steps away
• Irvin Capers Lord — steps away