First Baptist Church of Farmersville
Farmersville, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Fifteen charter members, meeting under a brush arbor at this site on May 14, 1865, organized the First Baptist Church and chose the Rev. John C. Averitt (1818-1895) as the first pastor. Worship services were held in private homes and later in the Masonic Hall on the east side of the town square. After a successful interdenominational revival, the Baptists decided to erect a permanent church building. The congregation bought the site of the old brush arbor and in 1877 built a simple frame church. A bell installed in the steeple heralded special events to the community. Another successful revival in 1898 emphasized the need for a larger structure. More land was acquired and the present church building constructed in 1900. A combination of several architectural styles, the brick edifice is topped by a roof of pressed metal. The exterior walls of the sanctuary form a multisided projection flanked by matching towers with steeply pitched roofs. The bell from the 1877 church was transferred to the north belfry. Educational buildings were added in 1938 and 1955-56. This congregation provides many community-oriented services, including a church-sponsored library. Several well-known Baptist leaders served as pastor here.**Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1977***
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On a spring day in 1865, as the Civil War drew to its close, fifteen charter members gathered under a brush arbor at this Collin County site to organize Farmersville's First Baptist Church, calling the Rev. John C. Averitt as their first pastor. The congregation worshiped in homes and the Masonic Hall before building a simple frame church in 1877, its steeple bell announcing news to the town. A growing membership replaced it in 1900 with the present brick sanctuary, a picturesque blend of architectural styles crowned with pressed-metal roofing and flanking towers.
Why it matters
The church traces the way a frontier congregation grew alongside its town across the Reconstruction and Gilded Age decades, its succession of buildings marking the community's rising permanence and prosperity.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Rev. John C. Averitt
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Methodist Church of Farmersville
Farmersville, TX
This Farmersville congregation grew from Methodist classes led in 1856 by the Rev. J. W. Chalk in a country schoolhouse, gathering strength through revivals and years of arbor meetings before building its first church in 1875. A grand ornate sanctuary designed by architect James Edward Flanders replaced it in 1902, only to burn in 1924; the present Greek Revival church followed in 1926. Over the decades the congregation served its town in wide-ranging ways, even lending its building as a blood-drive site and air-raid shelter during World War II.
Farmersville
Farmersville, TX
Farmersville began in 1849 as a settlement on the Jefferson-McKinney Road, named by pioneers for their chief occupation. It gathered churches, a school, and a public square, incorporated in 1873, and grew into a farm-trade center famous in the 1930s as the "Onion Capital of North Texas," shipping over a thousand carloads a year. Among its residents was Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II, who lived here before entering the Army.
Farmersville I.O.O.F. Cemetery
Farmersville, TX
Farmersville grew from the 1850s out of the earlier pioneer settlement of Sugar Hill, taking its name from the farming background of its settlers. In 1875 the Independent Order of Odd Fellows chartered Pride Lodge No. 208 here, and in 1899 the fraternal order set aside this hilltop as a cemetery. Enlarged to 25 landscaped acres, it holds a 1902 mausoleum and carved statuary, and still chronicles the town's history through the lives of those buried here.
Huson Cemetery
Farmersville, TX
Allen Daniel brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1847 and bought 480 acres here in 1851, only to die and be buried on his own land the following year. His daughter Tennessee, who married D. E. Huson, later gave the ground around her father's grave to the community as a public cemetery. Among the hundreds of marked and unmarked graves lie town founders, pioneer families, and many former slaves and their descendants, including the Nelson, Sneed, Glass, and Bryson families.