First Baptist Church of Richardson
Richardson, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1865 with nineteen charter members, this congregation began as Mt. Calvary Baptist Church. Early worship services were held in the Elm Grove Schoolhouse. The Rev. J. J. Butler was called as first pastor of the congregation. William Huffhines, a charter member of the church and an early Dallas County pioneer, donated two acres of land for a sanctuary. Also located on the land was Mt. Calvary Cemetery. A frame sanctuary was built in 1868 and the congregation continued to meet there until 1885, when they voted to move five miles north to the new town of Richardson. Philemon W. and Mary Huffhines gave land at the corner of Greenville Avenue and Phillips Street for a sanctuary, which was completed in February 1886. After it was destroyed in a storm in 1909, a new brick structure was completed on the same site in 1910. The brick building was replaced in 1953, and one year later the congregation voted to change its name to First Baptist Church of Richardson. Over the years, First Baptist Church has served the community with a varietyof outreach programs. This site was acquired in 1976, and a new sanctuary was dedicated in February 1987.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1865 as Mt. Calvary Baptist Church with nineteen charter members, this congregation first met in the Elm Grove Schoolhouse before pioneer William Huffhines donated two acres for a sanctuary. In 1885 the members voted to move five miles north to the new railroad town of Richardson, where a succession of sanctuaries rose and fell to storms over the decades. The church took its present name in 1954.
Why it matters
The congregation's migration to follow the railroad captures a common pattern in nineteenth-century Texas, where new rail towns pulled established communities—and their institutions—into their orbit.
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Related people
- · J. J. Butler
- · William Huffhines
- · Philemon W. Huffhines
- · Mary Huffhines
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Blewett Cemetery
Richardson, TX
When the Rev. George L. Blewett's daughter Ann died in 1855, he opened this ground for family and community burials. A Cumberland Presbyterian minister, Blewett had come to Texas from Kentucky in 1853 with his family and fellow pioneers. Nine of his children lie here alongside George and his wife Nancy, and for decades it served as one of the primary burial grounds for the Richardson community.
McKamy Spring
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Long before European or American settlers reached North Texas, Native peoples camped around the natural spring now called McKamy Spring, one of the few above-ground springs still surviving in the area. Early settlers of Breckenridge—the community that preceded Richardson—used it as Bowser Spring until the railroad drew the town elsewhere. Richardson's first mayor, Thomas McKamy, later drew on the spring to supply water for wells and even the construction of the Central Expressway, bought the surrounding land, and placed a marker there honoring the Native Americans who had used it before him.
Routh Cemetery
Richardson, TX
Baptist minister Jacob Routh acquired a 440-acre survey here in 1851 and brought his mother and kin from Tennessee, helping organize a school, church, and store that grew into a community. When he set aside an acre as a family burial ground, a few early settlers already lay there, including a woman, a seven-year-old boy, and an unknown child. Of roughly two hundred graves, fewer than half are marked, the last burial coming in 1922.
Floyd Pioneer Cemetery
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In 1855 John B. Floyd of Kentucky bought 900 acres of North Texas prairie and settled his family here, setting aside an acre in the 1860s for a family burial ground. Its early graves tell frontier stories in miniature: strangers' children lost to diphtheria and a bandit killed at Floyd's Inn. Floyd and his wife Julia Ann lie here still, their pioneer plot long since bordered by the modern Restland Memorial Park.