First Baptist Church of Del Rio
Del Rio, Val Verde County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On May 24, 1896, Pastor Frank Marrs joined the Rev. and Mrs. Edwin S. Stucker as founding members of Del Rio's First Baptist Church. Marrs was from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Kentucky, and the Stuckers were both missionaries. The couple served railroad workers and their families from a railway car named "Goodwill," sponsored by the American Baptist Sunday School Society of Philadelphia, Pa. The church formally organized with six charter members. As Del Rio grew, so did the congregation and the need for a larger structure. Through a land donation, members moved church services to an adobe building on the southwest corner of Garfield and Pecan streets. On February 17, 1925, they laid the cornerstone of a brick and stone building at that same location to replace the adobe structure. That sanctuary remained home to the First Baptist congregation for 35 years. In 1960, the growing church built a new structure on Avenue G, outside the downtown area, incorporating the cornerstone of the old building. Over the years, Del Rio's First Baptist Church has constructed additional buildings to use for classrooms. It has also acquired land throughout the region to build other churches, including what would become the congregations of El Buen Pastor and Northside Baptist. Despite a fire that destroyed early church records, First Baptist Church has a strong sense of its history and remains true to the vision of service set forth by the founders. It continues to be an important institution in the Del Rio community more than a century after its modest beginning. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First Baptist Church of Del Rio began in 1896 with a seminary-trained pastor and a missionary couple who ministered to railroad workers from a rail car named "Goodwill." Organized with six charter members, the congregation moved from an adobe building to a brick-and-stone sanctuary whose 1925 cornerstone traveled with them again in 1960 to a new home on Avenue G. Over more than a century the church spun off other congregations across the region, including El Buen Pastor and Northside Baptist.
Why it matters
The congregation's origins among railroad workers reflect how the railroad's arrival seeded new towns and churches across the Texas borderlands.
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Related people
- · Pastor Frank Marrs
- · Rev. Edwin S. Stucker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Glenn-Dowe House
Del Rio, TX
Local contractor Daniel Glenn built this brick residence in 1900–01, working a band of decorative brickwork into its design, and sold it in 1901 to the widow Bessie Chisum. In 1906 she married Luke Dowe, a border peace officer who served first with the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion and later with U.S. Customs. The Dowes made the house their home for fifty years.
First United Methodist Church of Del Rio
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Six settlers organized a Methodist congregation in the border town of Del Rio in 1882, meeting first in members' homes before building a frame chapel on the edge of town. The church grew with the city—swelling as soldiers trained at nearby Camp Michie during World War I and again with the opening of Laughlin Air Force Base—and today carries on missions at home and abroad.
City of Del Rio
Del Rio, TX
When Val Verde County was carved out of the arid borderlands of far West Texas in 1885, the dusty settlement of Del Rio was chosen as its seat of government. Yet formal city government came slowly: residents first voted to incorporate in 1905, electing James McLymont as their first mayor, then apparently dissolved and reincorporated in 1911 under a commission form. A home-rule charter in 1918 and a shift to a council-manager system in 1967 trace the community's steady maturation from frontier waystation to established border city.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church
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Before this limestone church rose in 1891-92, Catholics in the border town of Del Rio gathered for Mass in private homes and a simple wooden building on this spot. Guided by the Oblate fathers, the mission grew into Sacred Heart parish in 1895, and the Gothic Revival structure was enlarged and remodeled in 1929. Its stained-glass windows later followed the congregation to a new church dedicated in 1969.