First Baptist Church of Jaspser
Jasper, Jasper County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This church was organized on December 23, 1855, with 15 members. The establishment of the fellowship was directed by a Presbytery consisting of ministers John Bean, William Blackshear, E. S. Phelps, and W. W. Maund. The first service was conducted on Christmas Day by the Rev. Blackshear. Another church organizer, the Rev. Maund, served as the initial pastor. In 1856 the church elected the first deacon, Fabian Adams, a local merchant who served as a trustee for the Jasper Collegiate Institute. The fellowship, which included slaves as early as 1859, worshiped at this site in a small wooden sanctuary. Despite a decline in membership during the 1870s, the church later outgrew the facility. A larger wooden building was constructed here in 1893, following a year of exceptional growth for the congregation. With minor additions, the structure served the members until the present sanctuary was completed in 1943, during the second pastorate of Dr. E. A. Ingram. The First Baptist Church has been instrumental in the development of area missions. Congregations sponsored by the church include Adams Chapel, North Baptist, Hillcrest Mission,and Tanglewood Mission.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The First Baptist Church of Jasper was organized on December 23, 1855, with fifteen members, and held its first service on Christmas Day under the Rev. William Blackshear. Its rolls included enslaved worshippers as early as 1859, and its members were tied to the local Jasper Collegiate Institute. Growing congregations, the church built successively larger sanctuaries in 1893 and 1943 and helped plant several area missions.
Why it matters
The church's long history traces the religious and social life of East Texas from the antebellum era through the twentieth century, including the presence of enslaved members before emancipation.
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Related people
- · William Blackshear
- · W. W. Maund
- · Fabian Adams
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church of Jasper
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Methodism reached Jasper in the late 1830s when circuit rider Moses Spear organized a congregation in the young Republic of Texas, with Daniel Carl as first pastor in 1839. Early worshipers gathered in homes, the courthouse, and the Masonic lodge until an 1859 sanctuary — where men, women, and enslaved people entered by separate doors — served the town. The women's missionary society funded "the church the women built," completed in 1906.
Site of J.H. Rowe School
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Formal public schooling for African American students near Jasper began in 1875 at Cold Springs and moved to a Jasper campus in 1924, the same year James Hoff Rowe arrived as administrator. A graduate of Prairie View and Hampton Institute who had served as a dean at Prairie View, Rowe led the school to expanding scope and stature until his death in 1943. Renamed in his honor, the school served the community until integration closed it in 1968.
Jasper Steers
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In the era of segregated sport, logging contractor Elmer Simmons built the Jasper Steers, an African American baseball team, buying bleachers, lighting, and dressing rooms from a defunct Louisiana club and reassembling them as Steer Stadium east of Jasper in the 1940s. The barnstorming Steers traveled across the United States and Canada, one of many independent Black semi-pro teams whose players insisted they could beat any professional club. In a telling local twist, the stadium hosted the white high school's home games, and Simmons even signed one of its pitchers to his by-then integrated roster before the team played its last game in 1961.
Campground Cemetery
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Adam Byerly came to Texas from South Carolina in 1834 and received a Mexican land grant on Sandy Creek, where the site became a Methodist camp meeting ground known as Byerly Campground. Byerly sold ten acres to the church in 1843, and a cemetery for the area's African American residents took shape to the south. Its earliest marked grave is that of Tom Limbrick (1827–1908), and many former slaves, community leaders, and veterans rest here. Ties with nearby Armstrong C.M.E. Church give the site its alternate name, Armstrong Campground Cemetery.