Clearfork Baptist Church
Lockhart, Caldwell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Oldest church in Caldwell County. Organized in 1848, with J. Isaac, pastor. Building erected in 1850; hand-hewn oak frame was morticed with pegs; lumber hauled from Port Lavaca. Land for church and adjoining cemetery was donated in 1857 by John H. Hargis and Thomas L. Burkhead. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1848 with J. Isaac as its first pastor, Clearfork Baptist is the oldest church in Caldwell County. Its 1850 building rose from a hand-hewn oak frame morticed with pegs, its lumber hauled overland all the way from the coast at Port Lavaca. In 1857 John H. Hargis and Thomas L. Burkhead donated the land for the church and its adjoining cemetery.
Why it matters
The church marks the arrival of settled religious and community life on the central Texas frontier in the first years of American statehood.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John H. Hargis
- · Thomas L. Burkhead
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Clear Fork Cemetery
Lockhart, TX
Clear Fork Cemetery dates to the 1850s, when Anglo settlement was spreading across the Caldwell County countryside, and its earliest graves reach back to those frontier decades. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2008, it preserves the resting place of the area's early settlers.
McNeil Cemetery
Luling, TX
Founded about 1867 on land deeded to the Soda Springs Methodist Church by early settler Margret Hinds, this cemetery took its first recorded burial—Henrietta Gant—in 1868. Once known as Soda Springs Methodist Cemetery, it was renamed McNeil sometime before the church disbanded in 1919. More than 390 graves hold the area's early settlers and their descendants, and an association still cares for the grounds.
Andrew Lee Brock
Lockhart, TX
A Tennessee-born settler, Andrew Lee Brock came to Caldwell County in 1848 and started married life on a Boggy Creek parcel gifted by his father-in-law, raising a log cabin and working cotton, grain, and a cotton gin. As his family and fortunes grew, he turned to shaping Lockhart itself, raising livestock and financing a dozen commercial buildings in the town's business district — many still standing today.
First Presbyterian Church of Lockhart
Lockhart, TX
First Presbyterian Church of Lockhart organized in 1849 with ten members under the Rev. N. P. Charlot, meeting in homes and the Masonic hall until elders bought this site in 1854 and raised a concrete building the next year. An 1879 cyclone leveled that church; successors followed in 1880 and the present sanctuary in 1914. One of the oldest congregations in the city, it still serves its neighbors through outreach.