Center City Baptist Church
Star, Mills County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1875, Reverend Noah Turner Byars, a former blacksmith who served with Sam Houston during the Texas Revolution, founded this church and served as interim minister. Rev. Byars ordained David Isaac Haralson, the first permanent pastor. Byars also led the Bennett Creek Baptist Church, as it was known then, to be part of his newly-formed Hamilton County Association of Baptist Churches. In 1887, when the area was formed as Mills County, the church was one of the oldest in the county. It was called Center City Baptist Church in the 1901 deed and, soon after, a permanent structure was built in the newly-established community by that name. However, summer revivals were held under a brush arbor as late as 1940. In 1946, high wind destroyed the original wood frame church building and a new building was erected that included an auditorium and classrooms. The church was a cooperative member of the community from the beginning, sharing its building and resources with other denominations. Revivals were part of the mission of the church from the early years. The tradition continues with special revival nights in the cooler months and longer summer revivals. Over the years, Center City Baptist Church ordained many deacons and ministers who went on to serve much larger churches in the area. In addition, the church has been very active not only in the community but worldwide through the service and support of missionaries, including missionaries to Alaska in the 1960s and 1970s. For well over a century, Center City Baptist Church has been a beacon for the surrounding area.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As settlers pushed into the rolling country of central Texas after the Civil War, a former blacksmith and Texas Revolution veteran, Noah Turner Byars, gathered a congregation here in 1875 and helped knit it into a new association of frontier Baptist churches. Known first for nearby Bennett Creek, it took the Center City name in a 1901 deed, held summer revivals under a brush arbor into the 1940s, and rebuilt after a 1946 windstorm flattened the frame sanctuary. For generations it doubled as a shared community space and a training ground for deacons and ministers who went on to larger pulpits.
Why it matters
The little country church was a cornerstone of settlement life on the Texas frontier, where a single building often served as sanctuary, schoolhouse, and civic hall for a scattered rural community.
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Related people
- · Noah Turner Byars
- · David Isaac Haralson
Related events
- · Founding of Center City Baptist Church (1875)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Center City United Methodist Church
Star, TX
In the young settlement of Center City—first known as Hughes Store—a circuit-riding preacher brought Methodism to the area in the early 1870s, and charter members organized a church in 1878. The congregation first gathered in the Masonic lodge before building its own home in 1901, then a new building in 1952. Through mission work and youth ministry, it has remained a spiritual anchor of this small central Texas community.
Center City Community
Star, TX
Settled in 1854 by the Jenkins and Morris families, this Mills County community was first called "Hughes Store" for the couple who opened a shop here in the 1870s. Hopeful founders platted a townsite in 1876 and dreamed of the railroad and the county seat, gathering beneath an ancient live oak long held by tradition to mark the geographic center of Texas. Renamed Center City, the town bustled with stores until the railroad passed it by in 1885; its post office lingered only until 1920.
Center City Cemetery
Star, TX
The Center City Cemetery began in 1874 with the burials of a settler's adult and infant daughters, a poignant marker of how fragile frontier life could be in the ranching country of central Texas. In 1905 a local judge bought the ground to serve as a community graveyard, and by the mid-20th century neighbors had organized a committee and endowed a maintenance fund to keep it up. More than 500 graves here hold many of the area's earliest settlers.
Caradan Cemetery
Goldthwaite vicinity, TX
After the Civil War, families settled the Mills County area first called Lookout, and in 1889 A. F. Smith deeded two acres for a public school. When the infant son of the Nixon family died that year, he was buried on the school land, seeding a cemetery that remained when the school later burned and moved. More than 150 graves include veterans from the Civil War through both World Wars, and the burial ground endures as one of the few remnants of the vanished town of Caradan.