Fifth Street Missionary Baptist Church
Levelland, Hockley County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1921, thirteen area residents, under the leadership of a Rev. Curry, organized a congregation, originally known as First Missionary Baptist Church. This was the first church in the newly established Hockley City (now Levelland), and many early pioneers and leaders were members. Members completed a church building in 1926 at this location. The church's first ordained minister was B.E. Gunn, who also served as the town's first postmaster. Since its founding, members have been involved in missions. The church's rich history has also included activities such as maintaining a food pantry, preparing community meals and packing charity boxes for orphans. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1921, thirteen residents led by a Rev. Curry organized the first church in the newly founded town of Hockley City—today's Levelland—originally called First Missionary Baptist Church. Many of the town's early pioneers and leaders were members, and they completed a building here in 1926. Its first ordained minister, B.E. Gunn, doubled as the town's first postmaster, and the congregation long sustained missions, a food pantry, and community charity.
Why it matters
As the first church in a brand-new South Plains town, this congregation shows how faith communities helped establish civic life on the Texas frontier in the early 20th century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The early 1920s on the Texas South Plains were a time of raw beginnings. Towns were not inherited here; they were founded, often within living memory of the people walking their new streets. Level, open country that had once been rangeland was being surveyed, platted, and settled, and a community's institutions had to be built from scratch, sometimes all at once.
Into this newness stepped the settlers of a place first called Hockley City — the town we now know as Levelland. These were pioneers in the plain sense of the word: people arriving to make a home where there had recently been very little, and who understood that a town needs more than houses to become a community.
Across the American frontier, and especially in a young Texas town like this one, the church was often among the very first institutions a community organized. It provided not only worship but a gathering place, a source of leadership, and a network of mutual care — the social glue that helped scattered newcomers become neighbors.
People & events
In 1921, thirteen area residents came together under the leadership of a Rev. Curry to organize a congregation. They called it, at first, the First Missionary Baptist Church. Thirteen is a small number, but in a brand-new town it represented a real act of commitment — a decision to plant something permanent in unproven ground.
This was the first church in the newly established Hockley City, and its rolls read like a roster of the town's early life: many of the community's pioneers and leaders were members. To join this congregation in those years was, in a sense, to help found the town itself. By 1926 the members had completed a church building on this site, giving their faith a permanent home.
The congregation's first ordained minister, B.E. Gunn, embodied how tightly church and civic life were woven together in a frontier town: he also served as the community's first postmaster. In one person, the new town had both its first pulpit and its first link to the wider world through the mail.
Its place in the American story
The story of this congregation is a small, clear window onto a pattern repeated across the settling of the American West: faith communities arriving at the ground floor of civic life, helping raw new towns cohere into places where people could put down roots.
That the same man could be both the first minister and the first postmaster says a great deal about how thinly staffed and closely knit these young communities were. Leadership was shared, roles overlapped, and the institutions we now think of separately — church, post office, town government — often grew up together in the same handful of dedicated people.
And the congregation's long habit of service — sustaining missions, keeping a food pantry, preparing community meals, packing charity boxes for orphans — shows the enduring civic role such a church could play. It was not only a place of worship but an engine of neighborly care, the kind of quiet institution that helped hold a community together long after its founding.
If you visit
Levelland today is an established South Plains town, so it takes a little imagination to stand at this site and picture it as Hockley City — a settlement so new that this was its very first church. Let the marker do that work for you, and the flat, wide country around you starts to feel like a frontier again.
Look at the location itself: members completed their building here in 1926, only a few years after that first gathering of thirteen. A congregation that has kept its place on a single site for a century has watched a whole town grow up around it, and there is something moving in that continuity.
If you're traveling the South Plains, this marker pairs naturally with the region's other early-settlement stories — courthouses, first businesses, first schools. Together they tell the tale of how a stretch of open plains became a network of towns, one founding institution at a time. Read the inscription, then take a slow look around and imagine the beginning.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · B.E. Gunn
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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