Ebenezer Baptist Church
Walker County, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation was organized in 1854 by The Rev. J. W. D. Creath, pastor of the Huntsville Baptist Church, and The Rev. Richard Pace, the pioneer Baptist leader and preacher who served as the first minister at this church. Early worship services were conducted in the homes of members. The first church building was a two-story structure shared with an early Masonic lodge. It was located at the site of Ebenezer Cemetery (6 mi. NE) on land conveyed in 1854 by Jonathan A. and Sarah McGary. The building served until 1880, when the church moved to the West Sandy community. Here services were first held in the sanctuary of Farris Chapel Methodist Church. A separate building, completed in the 1890s, was used until 1916, when the congregation relocated at this site. Throughout its history, Ebenezer Baptist Church has been led by many prominent pastors. It has also been active in the ordination of ministers, including J. S. McGraw, a Civil War chaplain, and Baptist preacher and missionary J. R. Walker, the son of early church leader J. N. Walker. An instrumental force in the development of the community, the church continues to reflect the ideals of its pioneer founders.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ebenezer Baptist Church was organized in 1854 by frontier Baptist ministers who first gathered worshippers in members' homes in the piney woods of Walker County. Its earliest building, a two-story structure shared with a Masonic lodge, stood near what became Ebenezer Cemetery, and the congregation relocated several times over the following decades. It became a training ground for preachers and missionaries and a steady anchor for the surrounding community.
Why it matters
Rural churches like this were the social and moral backbone of settlement in nineteenth-century East Texas, binding scattered pioneers into communities.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Richard Pace
- · J. W. D. Creath
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Farris Chapel Methodist Church
Huntsville, TX
Farris Chapel Methodist Church grew from a congregation founded by Hezekiah Farris in 1841, with the present building raised in 1880. Open to other faiths, it also served as the first schoolhouse in its part of Walker County. It stands as one of the area's oldest continuous institutions, born in the early years of the Texas Republic.
Hezekiah Faris
Walker County, TX
Born in Virginia and raised in Tennessee, Hezekiah Faris came to Texas in 1835 to fight for the colony's freedom and took part in the decisive victory at San Jacinto. He located bounty and headright land in this vicinity, became a local leader, and named Faris Chapel for his home church back in Tennessee. He married Matilda Stevens Roberts, and over time the family name shifted to Farris.
Buck Foster Cemetery
Bedias, TX
Buck Foster Cemetery took its name from William Harrison "Buck" Foster, who reserved an acre for burials when he sold his land in 1882 — though eroded sandstone markers show the ground served the Loma community even earlier. Among its hundreds of graves lies Nancy McCulloch Heath, of Choctaw and German descent, who came to Texas in 1845, alongside Civil War veterans and generations of her descendants. Its weathered stones, carved with Masonic, religious, and ranching symbols, form a folk record of southwestern Walker County.
Martha's Chapel
Walker County, TX
In the early 1830s the Robinson settlement became a stronghold of Methodism in southeast Texas, and by 1839 a campground, church, and school stood on land given to circuit-riding superintendent Littleton Fowler. The Fourth Texas Methodist Conference met here in 1843, and the site took the name Martha's Chapel in 1854 after a trustee's wife was buried behind the church. Though the congregation disbanded in the 1930s after a century of worship, the cemetery still marks the community's pioneer roots.