David Myers
Farmers Branch, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(October 15, 1797 - March 9, 1853) William Myers (b. 1753) and his wife Flora moved from Virginia to Kentucky, where the last of their ten children, David Myers, was born. David married fellow Kentuckian Letitia Reddish (1801 - 1885) in 1820. They moved to Indiana in 1829 and to Illinois in 1831, where David became a well-established Baptist Preacher. In 1843 he was ordained at Taylor's Creek Church in Jersey County, Illinois. Inspired by the prospect of free land in Texas, David and Letitia traveled south with their children and grandchildren, and on Christmas Eve, 1845, they crossed the Red River into Texas. They settled on a land grant in Peters Colony located 12 miles northwest of the present-day city of Dallas. Myers quickly established himself as a religious leader of the pioneer settlements in this area and on May 10, 1846, organized the Union Baptist Church, the earliest continuing Baptist congregation in Dallas County. He served Union Baptist Church until his death and was instrumental in the establishment of other churches in the area including Bethel, Rowlett Creek, Liberty, and Lonesome Dove. Myers died of pneumonia resulting from exposure to cold rain on his return home after delivering a sermon in Collin County.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Kentucky in 1797 to a Virginia family that had pushed west a generation before, David Myers became an ordained Baptist preacher in Illinois before the lure of free land carried him and three generations of his family across the Red River on Christmas Eve, 1845. Settling on a Peters Colony grant northwest of Dallas, he organized Union Baptist Church in May 1846 — the oldest continuing Baptist congregation in Dallas County — and helped plant several more before pneumonia took him after a cold ride home from preaching.
Why it matters
Myers embodies the way faith and family migration knit together the raw settlements of frontier Texas, with the country church serving as the first civic institution of a new community.
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Related people
- · David Myers
- · Letitia Reddish Myers
- · William Myers
Related events
- · Founding of Union Baptist Church
- · Peters Colony settlement
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
John Keenan
Farmers Branch, TX
John Keenan lived only two months in the autumn of 1843, but he is remembered as the first child born to settlers in the area that would become Dallas County. He was the son of Farmers Branch founders Thomas and Sarah Keenan, who opened this cemetery to bury their infant. The tiny grave thus marks both a family's grief and the very beginning of settled life in the region.
Keenan Cemetery
Farmers Branch, TX
Thomas and Sarah Keenan came to this area with the Peters Colony in 1842, and when their two-month-old son John died in 1843 they buried him here, founding one of the earliest cemeteries in present-day Dallas County. The many infant graves testify to the brutal hardships of pioneer life. The Keenans' log cabin also hosted the area's first Baptist congregation in 1846, and those buried here include settlers and veterans of conflicts from the Civil War to Vietnam.
Texian Land and Emigration Company
Farmers Branch, TX
This site marks the first agency, opened in January 1845, of the colonization venture better known as Peters' Colony. Under a contract secured from the Republic of Texas in 1841, William S. Peters and his associates introduced more than ten thousand settlers across seventeen counties of North Texas, seeding communities like Farmers Branch.
First Baptist Church of Farmers Branch
Farmers Branch, TX
Thomas and Sarah Keenan settled at Farmers Branch in 1842, during the Republic of Texas era, and began a family cemetery here after burying their infant son the next year. With the Rev. David Myers they helped organize a Baptist congregation in 1846; when that group moved on, twelve members reestablished Baptist worship in 1870 as the Farmers Branch Missionary Baptist Church, first meeting in the local school. Growing steadily across the following century, it took the name First Baptist Church of Farmers Branch in 1951.