First Baptist Church of Katy
Katy, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On November 20, 1898, the Rev. T. L. Scruggs led the first official meeting of what would later become the First Baptist Church of Katy. Among the new congregation's first twelve charter members were W.H. Featherston, W. P. & Hattie A. Morrison and seven of their family and relatives. The Morrison and Featherston families did much to support the foundation and growth of the church, first named Zion Baptist Church. They met in the one-room Katy schoolhouse with several other denominations. The Rev. J. P. Durham, a circuit minister, was called as the first pastor. He visited once a month, alternating with the Methodists and others. In 1904 the congregation began to meet in a building erected by Katy Methodists. The Baptist congregation changed its name to Katy Baptist church in 1914 and erected its own building at a cost of $1,380. The Katy Baptist Church grew quickly with the rapidly expanding economy of the Texas Gulf Coast. A masonry building replaced the first worship center and the name first Baptist Church of Katy was adopted in 1948. Continued growth resulted in the addition of a much larger worship center and educational building in 1967. The church has contributed to worldwide missions as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention since 1905. Direct missions include an annual outreach in Mexico and the establishment of twelve mission churches in this area since 1946. The membership swelled to more than four thousand and the church relocated to a site just south of the original building as it celebrated its centennial in 1998. A white frame chapel was erected at the new site as a reminder of the first building and the original and continuing vision of the church. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1898 as Zion Baptist Church, this Katy congregation began when the Rev. T. L. Scruggs gathered a dozen charter members, many of them from the Morrison and Featherston families, in the town's one-room schoolhouse. A circuit-riding minister visited just once a month, alternating Sundays with other denominations, until the growing church built its own home in 1914. As the Gulf Coast economy boomed the congregation swelled past four thousand members by its 1998 centennial, when it raised a white frame chapel to echo its first building.
Why it matters
The church's growth from a shared schoolroom to a mega-congregation mirrors the explosive twentieth-century expansion of the Texas Gulf Coast and its suburban communities.
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