First Baptist Church of Rocksprings
Rocksprings, Edwards County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1893, an early year in the community's history, a small group of seven organized the Missionary Baptist Church of Christ at Rocksprings. The church disbanded after a few years, but was reborn as Rocksprings Baptist Church in 1898. Seventeen members called the Rev. Dan W. Matthews as their first pastor in that year. The Ladies' Aid Society began in 1900 under Mrs. Matthews. A frame building was erected in 1904; a parsonage followed in 1909. The small church, through the dedication of its members, prospered until 1927, when a tornado devastated the town of Rocksprings. Texans came from far and wide to repair the community and rebuild the Baptist building. The church continued to thrive through the Depression and war years. By 1932 a Mexican American mission sponsored by the Baptists became a full Sunday School; in 1936 the membership of the Baptist church was 157 and in 1949 it was 207. The congregation was active in support of Baptist organizations. Modern brick facilities were dedicated on this site in 1966. In missionary service, community outreach, and devotion to worship, the First Baptist Church of Rocksprings continues to uphold the values and traditions of its pioneer founders. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized by a handful of believers in 1893, this Baptist congregation took root in the earliest days of Rocksprings and weathered the same trials as the town around it. When the 1927 tornado flattened much of the community, Texans arrived from far and wide to help rebuild both the town and the church. Through Depression and wartime the congregation grew, even sponsoring a Mexican American mission that became its own Sunday school.
Why it matters
Small-town churches were the social backbone of frontier Texas, binding scattered ranch families together and organizing recovery when disaster struck.
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Related people
- · Rev. Dan W. Matthews
Related events
- · 1927 Rocksprings tornado
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rocksprings Cemetery
Rocksprings, TX
Rocksprings sprang up on the arid Edwards Plateau after J. R. Sweeten sank the area's first water well in 1889, and within a few years a two-acre plot was set aside to bury the settlers and passing travelers of this remote ranching country. The graveyard grew alongside the town, absorbing the dead from the catastrophic tornado that tore through Rocksprings in April 1927. Even its iron fencing tells a story, given up to World War II scrap drives.
First Baptist Church of Barksdale
Barksdale, TX
Founded in 1883 with nineteen members, the Barksdale Baptist Church was the first Baptist congregation in this remote Edwards County community, and for generations its baptisms were held at the nearby Nueces River crossing. A frame sanctuary of 1906 served until this native-stone building replaced it in 1943, begun by a local builder and finished by the congregation itself. Its simple front-gabled form, stone veneer, and exposed rafter ends reflect the hand-built churches of the Texas Hill Country.
Wooten Cemetery
Telegraph, TX
Like many Hill Country burial grounds, Wooten Cemetery began with a single sorrow—the 1880 grave of one-year-old Cornelius Clay Jackson, whose headstone remains its oldest. His mother followed the next year, and among the graves lies a family thought to have died of tuberculosis, a reminder of frontier medicine's limits. The cemetery takes its name from Simon Lee Wooten, a Civil War veteran who came to Texas from Georgia "upon the death of the Old South."
Real County
Leakey, TX
In the rugged canyon country of the Edwards Plateau, the settlement of Leakey straddled a county line, forcing residents to trek over mountains and rivers to conduct official business after the county seat moved to Rocksprings in 1891. After a rejected 1895 petition, the legislature finally created a new county in 1913—named, by amendment, for rancher and senator Julius Real. Farming and ranching sustained a rural way of life until highways arrived in the 1930s and, later, tourism and hunting reshaped the local economy.