First Baptist Church of Chico
Chico, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized in 1874 in home of B. F. Booth by Missionary Noah T. Byars (1808-88), assisted by the Reverend Sithemore, who became pastor. Congregation met at Booth's and in the H. P. Morris home until it acquired site east of present church and built a brush arbor for summertime use, worshiping in the schoolhouse in winter. The earliest frame church was replaced by a larger one in 1908; Sunday School rooms were added in 1936; the educational building was erected in 1959; the present sanctuary was completed in 1962. Original membership of five has increased to more than 400.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1874 in the home of B. F. Booth, this Baptist congregation was founded with help from pioneer Missionary Noah T. Byars, worshiping in members' homes, a summertime brush arbor, and the local schoolhouse before building its own churches. From an original membership of five it grew past 400, adding ever-larger buildings from a frame church up to the 1962 sanctuary. Its story mirrors the steady growth of a Texas farm town.
Why it matters
The congregation traces how faith communities took root on the Texas frontier, growing from a handful of neighbors in a front room into a lasting town institution.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1874, Wise County sat near the ragged edge of settled Texas. The Civil War and the hard years after it had slowed settlement across North Texas, and for a time the frontier had actually pulled back as families left exposed farms. By the mid-1870s that was changing. New settlers were arriving, fields were being broken, and small communities were forming wherever there was good water and good land.
Those communities rarely had much at first: a few cabins, a store perhaps, and a schoolhouse that did double duty for every public purpose. Churches usually started the same way this one did, with no building at all. A handful of believers met in whatever parlor would hold them.
Across Texas, Baptists and Methodists were the churches most at home in this kind of setting. They could organize a congregation without waiting for an ordained bishop or a costly building. A missionary riding through could gather a few families, preach, and leave behind a church that would sustain itself. The Chico congregation grew out of exactly that frontier habit.
People & events
The story begins in a private home. In 1874, in the house of B. F. Booth, a missionary named Noah T. Byars helped organize a Baptist church. Byars was already a well-known figure in Texas Baptist life. Decades earlier, delegates had gathered in his building at Washington-on-the-Brazos to declare Texas independent in 1836. He spent the rest of his long life planting churches across the state, and the Chico congregation was one of them. A minister the marker calls the Reverend Sithemore helped him and became the first pastor.
The church began with just five members. For a while they took turns hosting services, first at the Booths' and then at the home of H. P. Morris. Once they got a piece of land of their own, they built a brush arbor: a simple frame roofed with leafy branches, which gave shade for summer preaching and let the breeze through. In winter they moved into the schoolhouse, a common arrangement in a town where one public building served many uses.
From there the church built its way up, one step at a time. A modest frame church came first. In 1908 it was replaced by a larger one. Sunday School rooms followed in 1936, an educational building in 1959, and the present sanctuary in 1962. Each project marks a moment when the congregation had outgrown its space and felt confident enough to build again. By the time the marker went up, the five founders had become more than 400 members.
Its place in the American story
The Chico church traces a pattern that played out in thousands of American towns as settlement moved west. Religion on the frontier seldom arrived with a steeple. It arrived with a traveling preacher, a borrowed front room, and a few families willing to commit to each other. Only later came the land, then the lumber, then the brick.
Brush arbors were one of the defining features of that world. Camp meetings and summer revivals under arbors were a big part of rural religious life across the South and Southwest. For many families they were social events as much as spiritual ones: a chance to see neighbors, share food, and hear preaching after a week of isolated farm work.
The church's long list of building dates also tells a national story in miniature. It grew through the early twentieth century, kept adding during the Depression era, and expanded again in the prosperous years after World War II, when congregations all over the country built educational wings and new sanctuaries. You could read a century of small-town American life in that list.
If you visit
Chico is a small town, and that is part of the appeal here. As you stand by the marker, try to picture the scene the inscription describes: a handful of neighbors crowded into a front room, and later a summer congregation under a roof of branches somewhere close to where the church stands now. The marker mentions that the early site lay east of the present church, so it's worth a look around to get your bearings.
The building you see today is the 1962 sanctuary, the latest chapter in a story that began with five people. If services or activities are going on, remember that this is a working congregation and not a museum. Be respectful, and admire the architecture from outside unless you're invited in.
Chico works well as a stop on a back-roads drive through Wise County, where the rolling North Texas country still has the farm-town feel of the era this church grew up in. Put it together with other nearby markers and you'll start to see how these small communities took shape: schoolhouse, church, cemetery, main street, one after another.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Noah T. Byars
- · B. F. Booth
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Methodist Church in Chico
Chico, TX
This Methodist congregation was founded in May 1872, when pioneer Robert Calvin Mount, his wife, and three others gathered to worship in a log schoolhouse under the Reverend S.S. Cobb. Mount donated the land for its first church site. Over its first hundred years the congregation grew through five successive buildings on five different sites.
Siddons-Barnes Log Cabin
Chico, TX
Believed to have been raised in the early 1870s, this small oak-log cabin served area Methodists as their first place of worship and doubled as a schoolhouse on the Wise County frontier. Dr. J. A. Siddons and his wife bought it in 1883 and built rooms around it, and the Barnes family took it over in 1918. Stripped back to its original half-notched logs and moved to this site in 1987, the 256-square-foot cabin survives as a relic of pioneer beginnings.
Brown Hotel
Chico, TX
Colonel J.T. Brown founded Chico in 1876 and a dozen years later built this hotel, a fixture of the young North Texas town. In a striking scene, Governor Charles A. Culberson stood on the hotel porch to pardon Brown for his role in a deadly 1895 fight. Banker R. Lee Morris held the property for most of the twentieth century, from 1908 to 1965.
Robert Calvin Mount
Chico, TX
Robert Calvin Mount came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and helped organize the brand-new Wise County, winning election as its first tax assessor-collector in 1856. During the Civil War he served as a first lieutenant in Blythe's militia, and in 1874 he built a fort-like rock house near Chico as protection on a still-dangerous frontier. He is remembered as one of the county's founding pioneers.