First Baptist Church of Edgewood
Edgewood, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Elders E. B. Eakin and S. E. Reeves organized the original fifteen members of this congregation in December 1890. During its first two years of existence, the fellowship met for worship in several locations, including the community schoolhouse, under a brush arbor, and in a blacksmith shop. The church held services in its own building for the first time in May 1892. The First Baptist Church of Edgewood has continued to increase its membership over the years and has built new facilities to meet the needs of the growing congregation. (1995)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In December 1890, elders E. B. Eakin and S. E. Reeves gathered fifteen charter members to organize this Baptist congregation. In its first two years the fellowship worshiped wherever it could — the community schoolhouse, a brush arbor, even a blacksmith shop — before dedicating its own building in May 1892. It has grown and rebuilt with the town ever since.
Why it matters
The improvised early worship of a frontier-town congregation captures how faith communities took root in newly settled Texas, anchoring social life long before formal institutions arrived.
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Related people
- · E. B. Eakin
- · S. E. Reeves
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cheatham Memorial United Methodist Church
Edgewood, TX
This congregation grew from services led by a Methodist circuit rider in the late 1870s, worshiping in a building shared with the public school on land deeded by the Texas & Pacific Railroad. A chapel under construction collapsed in 1923 but was rebuilt, and by 1953 new facilities and a memorial gift prompted a new name. The church also launched a noted fundraising effort known as the 'Edgewood Plan.'
William H. Humphries Home
Edgewood, TX
William Henry and Molly Humphries were part of a large migration of Mississippi families to Edgewood in the early 1890s, drawn to a growing East Texas town. William opened a general store and bought up farmland to become a local business leader, and in 1893–94 he built this frame Victorian home where Molly hosted civic and church gatherings. The house sheltered the couple and their two sons and survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
A. L. Spradlin Log Cabin
Edgewood, TX
Adolphus Lane Spradlin came to Texas from Indiana as a boy in 1875 and, in 1898, built this dogtrot cabin of hand-hewn logs on land in the Van Zandt County community of Small. He and his wife Lee Ann, of Cherokee ancestry, farmed there until 1909, when he sold out and moved to Edgewood to run a cotton gin and serve 22 years as justice of the peace. The Sims, Vines, and Simmons families later called the cabin home.
Edgewood Cemetery
Edgewood, TX
Edgewood was born of the railroad: in 1878 Judge John C. Robertson and his partner W. S. Herndon gave land for a depot, and a community quickly grew around it. Amid Van Zandt County's seat dispute, Canton residents shifted their shipping here from Wills Point. The town cemetery holds its earliest gravestone from 1889, but after a lost deed and declining use, the last burial came in the 1920s; long neglected, the plot has since been restored.