Valley Springs Primitive Baptist Church

Primitive Baptists, also called Hardshells, trace their Texas start to Daniel Parker, whose Pilgrim Predestinarian Regular Baptist Church was organized in Illinois in July 1833 and moved to Texas as a body. It first met in Texas at his home in Austin's colony on January 25, 1834. Parker held mission societies, Sunday schools, Bible societies and seminaries to be unscriptural and a threat to each congregation's independence. Antimissionary Baptists were aggressive in the 1830s and 1840s but steadily lost ground to the cooperating churches that formed the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1885.

What the plaque says

Valley Springs Primitive Baptist Church Constituted in August 1882, this congregation elected one of its eleven charter members, Elder S. R. Woods, as its first pastor. The membership met monthly in the Valley Springs schoolhouse until 1886 when it moved to the Shiloh Community School building on land donated by Mr. and Mrs. S. S. Redford. Over the years, the Valley Springs Primitive Baptist Church has continued to meet here, serving a widespread rural area of Llano County. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Llano County Courthouse Square — 8.4 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 22 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 23 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 24 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• Community of Valley Spring — 3.1 mi
• Salem Cemetery — 3.4 mi
• Valley Spring Cemetery — 3.9 mi
• Llano County — 7.1 mi