First Baptist Church of Honey Grove
Honey Grove, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Originally organized in November of 1847 by Pastor W. M. Pickett, a missionary from the Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board, the First Baptist Church of Honey Grove met in a log schoolhouse at nearby Allen's Chapel. Nine charter members formed the church. After several years, there was a dispute between Allen's Chapel Methodists and the First Baptist Church over use of the schoolhouse. The Baptists erected a new structure in 1852. The following year the Baptist church split; remaining members called themselves Honey Grove Baptist Church. They held services in a frame schoolhouse for several years. In 1856, the Baptists, Methodists, Cumberland Presbyterians an Disciples of Christ built the first public building in Honey Grove. Called the Union Church, it was the only house of worship in the community for twenty years. When the Baptists acquired their own building, with a seating capacity of 350, in 1884, they inherited the Union Church bell. The First Baptist Church completed a new sanctuary in 1912. Solid brick walls, a metal roof and ceilings, cement foundation and cork linoleum flooring were highlights of the new building. In 1888 a former pastor of the First Baptist Church, John H. Boyett, and Lewis Holland printed the "Baptist News" in Honey Grove. Distributed to members of the faith throughout the state, the publication was a predecessor to "The Baptist Standard," which celebrated 100 years of publication in 1988. Marking 155 years of worship in 1997, the First Baptist Church of Honey Grove continues the traditions of its founders with a variety of religious life and community service programs. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1847 by a Southern Baptist missionary, this congregation began with nine members meeting in a log schoolhouse in the earliest years of Anglo settlement here. Its story runs through the frictions of a shared frontier meetinghouse, a congregational split, and decades in the interdenominational Union Church before the Baptists raised their own sanctuary in 1884 and a larger one in 1912. One of its former pastors even helped launch a Baptist newspaper that anticipated a statewide religious publication.
Why it matters
Frontier churches were the connective tissue of new Texas towns, and the way settlers shared, split, and rebuilt their houses of worship shows how community identity was forged on the ground.
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Related people
- · W. M. Pickett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Honey Grove Lodge No. 164, A. F. & A. M.
Honey Grove, TX
Chartered in 1856 after a dispensation two years earlier, the Honey Grove Masonic Lodge met first in the attic of the old Smith Hotel and above the Walcott School before settling into its own quarters. Fire destroyed its N. 6th Street building in 1955, after which the lodge and the local newspaper rebuilt side by side at this site. For more than a century it has been a fixture of the town's civic and charitable life.
Honey Grove City Hall
Honey Grove, TX
A decade after Honey Grove incorporated, Mayor J. P. Gilmer pressed the council in 1885 to build a proper city hall and jail, and the surviving minutes record every step—choosing a lot, arranging financing, and even rejecting the county's offer of aid when commissioners demanded a quarter interest. Built of stone from the local Floyd Quarry by contractor W. N. Allen, it opened in 1889 and remains Fannin County's only original civic building still standing. It is a rare survivor of small-town self-government in the Gilded Age.
Church of St. Mark, The Evangelist, Episcopal
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Organized in 1876 as northern Texas emerged from Reconstruction, this Episcopal congregation raised its Gothic revival sanctuary in 1883 during the Rev. J. P. Lytton's ministry. Its wood-frame form, lancet windows, and varnished pine interior beneath a cathedral ceiling reflect the modest but aspiring church architecture of a frontier Texas farming town. The building has stood as a touchstone of Honey Grove's pioneer-era community for well over a century.
Crockett Park
Honey Grove, TX
Late in 1835, frontiersman and former congressman David Crockett crossed into Texas along the Red River, camping near this spot where he found wild bees and honey in hollow trees and, in letters home, dubbed the place a "honey grove." Within weeks he died at the Alamo, but his nickname stuck. Surveyor Samuel A. Erwin settled here in 1839, and with Benjamin S. Walcott platted the town of Honey Grove, which grew to some 4,000 people by 1890 after the railroad arrived.