Cadiz Baptist Church
Beeville, Bee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation, orginally known as Lapara Baptist Church, was organized on Aug. 12, 1877, by 32 charter members. Services were held under a brush arbor and in a schoolhouse before a sanctuary was erected on Lapara Creek. The building was moved here in 1920, and the church was renamed for the Cadiz settlement. The facility later was enlarged to accommodate the growing church. In 1960 the congregation won the Rural Church of the Year award. In recent years the church has aided disaster victims and supported ministerial students and Christian crusades. (1983)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1877 as Lapara Baptist Church, this congregation of 32 charter members first worshipped under a brush arbor and in a schoolhouse before raising a sanctuary on Lapara Creek. In 1920 the building was moved here and the church renamed for the Cadiz settlement, growing and enlarging over the decades. By 1960 it had earned recognition as Rural Church of the Year.
Why it matters
Rural congregations like Cadiz Baptist knit together the scattered ranch families of South Texas, providing worship, schooling, and mutual aid on the settlement frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Live Oak County Jail
Oakville, TX
Oakville rose beside a Nueces River crossing and served as the seat of Live Oak County from 1856 to 1919, a supply hub for freight wagons and the cattle ranchers who thrived after the Civil War. Joseph Bartlett's 1857 stone courthouse and log jail marked the town as a center of frontier authority, and by 1887 a two-story sandstone Italianate jail—designed by the Diebold Lock and Safe Company of Ohio—held everyone from bar fighters to horse thieves. When the town lost its railroad bid in 1919, the county seat moved to George West, and the jail became one of the last landmarks of the old town.
Oakville
Oakville, TX
Named for the live oaks around it, Oakville served as the seat of Live Oak County from the county's creation in 1856 until 1919. For over sixty years it was the hub of government and commerce for this stretch of South Texas ranch country. When the county seat moved to railroad-served George West, Oakville faded into a quiet crossroads.
Gussettville
Gussettville, TX
Gussettville began in the 1830s when Irish Catholic settlers of the McMullen and McGloin colony put down roots in South Texas, first calling the place "Fox Nation" before renaming it for storekeeper N. Gussett in the 1850s. The community built the first Catholic church in Live Oak County in 1874 on land donated by Thomas and Anne Shannon, and thrived as a stop on the San Antonio–Brownsville stagecoach line. Like hundreds of similar towns, it withered once the railroad passed it by, leaving the church as its chief surviving landmark.
Oakville Cemetery
Oakville, TX
When Thomas Wilson donated this ground in 1857, the land had already passed through the hands of empire — it was originally part of the 1831 McMullen-McGloin colony granted under Mexico. As the young community of Oakville took shape, its cemetery became the resting place of the county's founding generation, including town founder J.T. James and the organizers of Live Oak County. The graves here read like a roll call of the pioneers who settled this stretch of South Texas.