Cook Springs Baptist Church
Walker County, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Baptists organized here in 1901 and held services at the Guinea Glade School (about 2 mi. NW). Brother Elisha E. Day (1848-1936), pastor of the Woodville Church (about 10 mi. SW), helped establish the congregation and conducted its first services. Charter members included Mr. and Mrs. Jim Cauthen, Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Hill, Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Petree, Mr. and Mrs. John L. Petree, Mrs. Mary Petree, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Petree, Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Tharp, and Miss Ruth Tharp. Mrs. Sarah Brown Gaines, wife of Toliver L. Gaines, organized the Sunday School. In 1903 Mrs. Scisely Wells Cook Rose (1830-1912), also a charter member, gave this spring-fed site for a church building. She asked that the church be named for her late husband, John William Cook, who died in 1864 in the Civil War. Records date from 1907, when Deacon Edwin Harris Tharp (1849-1922) was church clerk and C. W. Matthews was the first called pastor listed. By 1912 a wooden sanctuary was completed. Services were held one weekend per month, Saturday night and Sunday morning. A new building was dedicated in 1945, assembled and furnished largely by the labors of the congregation. Many additions indicate the growth of the church, yet the original spring survives, occupying a revered site.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Baptists in this corner of Walker County organized in 1901, first meeting at the Guinea Glade School with help from circuit-riding pastor Elisha E. Day. In 1903 charter member Cisely Cook Rose donated this spring-fed site, asking that the church honor her late husband, John William Cook, who died in the Civil War in 1864. A wooden sanctuary rose by 1912 and a new building followed in 1945, but the original spring still marks the revered ground.
Why it matters
Cook Springs shows how a rural congregation grew from a schoolhouse gathering into a lasting institution, its founding tied to memory of a Civil War loss.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Elisha E. Day
- · Cisely Cook Rose
- · John William Cook
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sam Houston Industrial and Training School
Huntsville, TX
Born in Huntsville in 1864 to enslaved parents, Samuel W. Houston earned degrees from Hampton, Atlanta University, and Howard before returning home to build schools for African American children in an era when the state funneled only Black-paid taxes toward their education. Around 1906 he opened classes in the rented Galilee Methodist Church, and the Sam Houston Industrial and Training School grew to serve hundreds of students statewide with vocational and academic programs. Merged into the Huntsville school system by 1930, it became Sam Houston High School and endured until integration in 1968.
Bishop Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute
Huntsville, TX
When federal support for Black education dried up after Reconstruction, African-American churches stepped in—and in 1883 leaders of the AME Church, backed by prominent Black citizens including Sam Houston's former slave Joshua Houston, opened Bishop Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute in Huntsville. Housed in a two-story brick building, it taught a classical curriculum of Latin, Greek, and mathematics alongside domestic and manual arts, drawing 164 students within a year. Though short-lived, the school left a deep mark on the community.
Rogersville
Huntsville, TX
Rogersville is Huntsville's oldest African-American neighborhood, born when former mayor Micajah Rogers began selling tracts to freed people in 1866 — among the buyers, Sam Houston's former body servant Joshua Houston. Freedpeople here built homes, churches, and businesses from blacksmith shops to cafes, and turned their churches into schools when public ones were denied. It became the heart of Huntsville's Black community and the home of its annual Juneteenth celebration.
First Missionary Baptist Church
Huntsville, TX
After sharing the Union Church with Methodists, Huntsville's Black Baptists organized their own First Missionary Baptist Church in 1869 in the Rogersville neighborhood, led by Rev. J.J. Rhinehardt with "Mother" Sarah Rolling. Trustees bought their first lot on 10th Street in 1872 for forty dollars in gold, and the congregation grew across generations, counting educator Samuel Walker Houston and Joshua Houston among its members. From food drives to scholarships, the church became a lasting engine of community life.