Independence and Old Baylor Park

Independence was founded in 1835 on seventy-eight acres of Austin's colony and quickly became a center of church and school life in the Republic. Frances Trask opened a boarding school for girls the year the town began, and in 1839 Thomas W. Cox and Thomas Spraggins organized the Independence Baptist Church, the fourth Missionary Baptist church in Texas. In the 1990s it was still an active congregation, the second-oldest in the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Sam Houston was a member and was baptized in 1854 in Little Rocky Creek, two miles southeast.

In 1845 the Baptists won a charter for a university, and Independence, then the wealthiest town in Texas, outbid its rivals. Baylor opened in 1846 with twenty-four pupils. By the 1850s the town had a hotel, a stage depot, a Masonic lodge and a small business district. Then its leaders and Baylor's refused the Santa Fe railroad a right-of-way. The lines went elsewhere, students could not easily reach the town, and in 1886 Baylor moved to Waco and its female college to Belton.

What remains is quiet. The columns of the female college stand in Old Baylor Park, the Texas Baptist Historical Center is in town, and Margaret Lea Houston and her mother are buried in the family cemetery by her house.