HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Ebenezer Baptist Church and Cemetery

Kosse, Limestone County, Texas

Marker Inscription

The Ebenezer Baptist Church was organized in 1865 to serve the Head's Prairie and Headsville communities. Delegates to the Trinity Baptist Association meeting that year were J. R. Bullard, William Samuel Clark, and Thomas Seale Head, with the Rev. J. W. Kinnard as pastor. Membership grew from 41 in 1865 to 210 in 1897, but by 1958 membership had declined so that the congregation disbanded. The adjacent cemetery has served residents in this part of Limestone County since at least 1876, when both B. F. Brooks and Charley Owen were buried there. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Organized in 1865 to serve the Head's Prairie and Headsville communities, Ebenezer Baptist Church grew from 41 members to 210 by 1897 before declining and disbanding in 1958. Its adjacent cemetery has served this part of Limestone County since at least 1876, when B. F. Brooks and Charley Owen were among the first buried there. The church and burial ground trace the life of a rural congregation from Reconstruction into the modern era.

Why it matters

It records the founding of a Baptist community in the aftermath of the Civil War, part of the wave of church-building that knit together rural Texas.

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