Union Missionary Baptist Church

The congregation came to rest in a railroad town. Fannin took shape after 1889, when the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific laid its line a mile south of the older Perdido settlement and residents moved to the new depot, which was given the name of the colonel captured nearby in 1836. Livestock went out from stock pens beside the tracks, and the town reached about 300 people by 1925, though a fire set off during a feud in 1911 had already burned most of it. By 1933 about 100 remained, and the school closed in 1944.

What the plaque says

Union Missionary Baptist Church UNION MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH IN THE 1880s, BAPTISTS IN COLOGNE, A FREEDMAN'S COLONY, ESTABLISHED WHAT WOULD BECOME THE UNION MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH. IT IS BELIEVED THAT THE CHURCH'S EARLY TRUSTEES BUILT THE FIRST CHURCH ALONG PERDIDO CREEK IN 1884 AND CALLED IT ST. JOHN. BETWEEN 1886 AND THE 1930s, THE CHURCH WAS LOCATED IN COLOGNE AS MT. CARMEL. ALTHOUGH THE CONGREGATION SPLIT DURING THAT PERIOD, THEY REUNITED IN FANNIN UNDER THE NAME UNION MISSIONARY AFTER A STORM DAMAGED THE MT. CARMEL CHURCH IN THE 1930s. IN 1950 THEY BEGAN RESTORING THE FANNIN CHURCH AND MEMBERS HAVE WORSHIPED IN THIS BUILDING EVER SINCE. THE CONGREGATION'S STRONG FAITH AND TENACITY HELPED THEM TO SERVE THE AREA FOR WELL OVER A CENTURY. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 0.5 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 — 9.4 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.
• Presidio La Bahía — 9.5 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 9.6 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Coleto and Goliad Massacre — 0.4 mi
• Site of Battle of El Perdido — 1.2 mi
• Cologne Community — 3.4 mi
• Coletoville Cemetery — 8.8 mi