First Baptist Church of Hale Center
Hale Center, Hale County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized religion in Hale County can be traced to 1883, when Methodist minister Horatio Graves and his family became the first permanent settlers of the area. Their home became a community gathering place, school, and union church. A post office was established under the name Epworth in 1884. A second community, Hale City, was established two miles away, and in 1893 the two settlements combined to form Hale Center. In 1891 twelve people gathered together to form Hale City Missionary Baptist Church. They called the Rev. I.B. Kimbrough as their first pastor. Early worship serviced were held in the Epworth and Hale City schoolhouses, and in 1893 the congregation moved to Hale Center. Services were held in the schoolhouse and in the Methodist church until the First Baptist sanctuary was completed in 1908. Continued growth over the years led to subsequent building programs. Throughout its history, the First Baptist Church has played an active role in its community. The congregation has consistently maintained an interest in both foreign and domestic missionary endeavors. It continues to serve the community with a variety of worship, educational, and outreach programs. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized religion on the High Plains of Hale County dates to 1883, when Methodist minister Horatio Graves and his family became the area's first permanent settlers and made their home a school, gathering place, and union church. As the settlements of Epworth and Hale City merged into Hale Center, twelve worshippers organized the Hale City Missionary Baptist Church in 1891 under the Rev. I.B. Kimbrough, meeting in schoolhouses until their own sanctuary was finished in 1908. The congregation grew alongside the town it helped anchor.
Why it matters
The church's founding shows how faith communities went hand in hand with the settlement of the Texas Panhandle, providing the first schools and civic institutions on newly broken plains.
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Related people
- · Horatio Graves
- · I.B. Kimbrough
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Nils Akeson
Hale Center, TX
Swedish-born Nils Akeson came to the thinly settled Texas Panhandle from Iowa in the late 1880s and helped found the town of Hale Center as an officer of its townsite company. He rode for the legendary XIT Ranch, served as postmaster, opened the town's first store, and helped bring the Santa Fe Railroad through in 1909. As mayor, land developer, and school trustee, he shaped nearly every institution of the young town.
Site of Epworth
Hale Center, TX
Epworth was Hale County's first settlement, born in 1884 when Methodist minister Horatio Graves of New York established a post office and dreamed of founding a religious colony on the high plains. He named it for Epworth, England, birthplace of Methodism's founder John Wesley, and carried the mail while selling supplies to settlers and XIT Ranch cowboys. Drought forced the site's abandonment by 1893, and its people helped found nearby Hale Center.
J. Frank Norfleet
Hale Center, TX
J. Frank Norfleet rose from a ranch hand with little schooling to a Panhandle cattleman whose holdings grew to 20,000 acres, and a short-line railroad town briefly bore his name before competition and thin finances killed it. In 1919 a swindle cost him his savings, and rather than accept the loss he spent nearly five years chasing the con men across North America and the Caribbean, an odyssey he later put into a book. His dogged manhunt made him a folk figure of frontier justice.
Ranching and Farming in Hale County
Hale Center, TX
When pioneers reached the High Plains of Hale County in the 1880s, land was cheap but life was brutal — many families lived in dugouts and hauled supplies from Colorado City until the railroad arrived. Cattle roamed free range across huge spreads like Col. C.C. Slaughter's Circle Ranch until barbed wire and land sales carved the open country into farms. The transition from cattle to crops was hard, and the Dust Bowl and Depression tested every family who stayed. Irrigation after World War II finally turned the region into a farming empire, with cotton as king.