Cottonwood Baptist Church
Dublin, Erath County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Just outside of Dublin, the small farming community of Cottonwood was established on the banks of Cottonwood Creek. The church that first met in the school is now a blooming church serving the community. As the years passed, the community began to grow and, in 1908, they organized the Cottonwood Missionary Baptist Church. Forty-six people joined the church at the time of the organization including T.H.P. and Mary Ann Thackerson’s family. Reverend Lee Gilbreath became the first pastor and served until 1910. Throughout the early years of the church, the entire community of Cottonwood met together with each denomination preaching once a month. The Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ and Presbyterian ministers each had a Sunday once a month to give their sermons. By 1928, the school consolidated with the Dublin public schools, and many families moved away. The church, now named Cottonwood Baptist Church, grew small and most became too discouraged to continue. Six teenaged girls: Fannie Stroud, Johnnie Bea Stroud, Merle Stroud, Bonnie Culver, all descendants of T.H.P. and Mary Ann Thackerson, and their two friends Mary Queen and dot smith continued to meet faithfully each Sunday. Eventually, people began to return and the church began to grow again. On February 23, 1959, Mrs. P.E.T. Culver, daughter of the Thackersons and the last surviving charter member, performed the ground breaking ceremony for the new church building. Throughout the next half century, the church ministered to those in their community and continues to serve worldwide.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the small farming community of Cottonwood outside Dublin, settlers organized the Cottonwood Missionary Baptist Church in 1908, with forty-six charter members and Reverend Lee Gilbreath as first pastor. In its early years the whole community shared one building, with Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, and Presbyterian ministers each preaching once a month. When the school consolidated with Dublin's in 1928 and families moved away, six teenaged girls kept the congregation alive by meeting faithfully every Sunday. Their persistence carried the church to a new building in 1959 and beyond.
Why it matters
The church's survival, sustained by a handful of determined young women, shows how rural congregations—and the faith of ordinary people—held small American communities together through decline.
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Related people
- · Lee Gilbreath
- · P.E.T. Culver
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Frances Marie Sparks Brown
De Leon, TX
Born in North Carolina in 1849, Frances Marie Sparks married Thomas Brown in 1865 and moved to a 410-acre farm near here around 1876. Through the 1880s and 1890s, "Aunt Fanny" served as midwife and lay doctor, often riding six to eight miles by horseback in the dark to deliver a baby. After her husband's death in 1912 she managed the farm, raised twelve children, and kept nursing her neighbors to the end of her long life in 1934.
Daniel Roberts and Mary Anna (Garland) Thornton
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Daniel Roberts Thornton, from Mississippi, married Mary Anna Garland—daughter of a frontier fighter—and the couple settled in Erath County in 1857 to raise cattle on a still-dangerous frontier. Mary Anna served as midwife and doctor to her neighbors while the family reared eight children; Thornton later fought for the Confederacy, served as county commissioner, and donated land for a school and the Hannibal Cemetery. Their lives trace the arc from open range to settled community.
Cottonwood Cemetery
Dublin, TX
On the banks of Cottonwood Creek just outside Dublin lies a cemetery born of a cotton-farming settlement founded in 1854 by Alexander H. and Sarah Holland Dobkins. James C. Bellamy donated land in 1857 for a school and public burial ground, and the graveyard's story is threaded with the dangers of the frontier—two people killed in a Comanche attack were reburied here decades later when railroad work forced the move. Shaded by post oak and pecan, it holds veterans of every war from the Civil War through Vietnam. The cemetery and the Cottonwood Baptist Church are all that remain of the community.
Trinity Episcopal Church
Dublin, TX
The Episcopal presence in Dublin began when Bishop A. C. Garrett preached here in 1881 and, finding a single lone Episcopalian in Mrs. John Harris, organized Trinity parish in 1884. A church building begun in 1889 hosted its first services in 1890 and was consecrated in 1897, later gaining a stone veneer over its original frame in 1947. The congregation's origin from one faithful settler is a small parable of how denominations spread across rural Texas.