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.
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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.