First Baptist Church of Silverton
Silverton, Briscoe County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the fall of 1891, six months before the official founding of the town of Silverton, a group of citizens met together to form a non-denominational community Sunday School. Early meetings were held in a mercantile store and the county courthouse. Later, the Presbyterian church hosted all denominations in town until each congregation was able to build its own structure. Under the leadership of W.S. Riddell, the First Baptist Church of Christ was organized on April 2, 1882, with sixteen charter members: J.H. & Sarah Askey, A.N. & Jane Askey, W.S. & Vici Riddell, Isaac H. & Sallie Watkins, A. Wright, J.A. & Lucy Northcutt, S.P. & Lee Huss, W.A.P. Matthews, and Mr. & Mrs. W.H. Stovall. By 1900 plans were made for the construction of a sanctuary and soon a one-room structure was built. Throughout its history, this congregation has served the community with a variety of worship, educational, and missionary outreach programs. Continued growth in membership led to the acquisition of property and the construction of additional facilities over the years. A part of Silverton history for over a century, First Baptist Church continues to uphold the traditions of its founders. (1992)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Even before the town of Silverton was platted, Panhandle settlers gathered for a community Sunday school in a mercantile store and the county courthouse. Out of that early fellowship the First Baptist Church was organized with sixteen charter members, and by 1900 the congregation raised a modest one-room sanctuary. Over more than a century it grew alongside the town it helped found on the high plains of Briscoe County.
Why it matters
The story of a church rising before its own town captures how faith communities anchored the settlement of the Texas Panhandle, providing the first institutions of frontier social life.
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Related people
- · W.S. Riddell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Methodist Church of Silverton
Silverton, TX
Organized as a Sunday school in 1891, the First Methodist Church of Silverton grew up with its Panhandle town. Its first pastor, the Rev. W.B. Ford, rode a circuit and preached here once a month, and early services filled a grocery store, a one-room schoolhouse, and the courthouse until the first sanctuary was finished in 1902. A replacement sanctuary, built in 1929 using some of the original materials, and later additions housed the growing congregation.
Pleasant Lafayette Crawford House
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Civil War veteran Pleasant Lafayette Crawford built this Queen Anne home, with its inviting wraparound porch, in 1904 on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle. He had come from Arkansas in the late 1880s to buy ranch land and open a mercantile store, and his family followed by covered wagon to join him. One of Silverton's founders, Crawford opened the town's first hotel in 1894, and his family kept the house until 1917.
Miner Crawford
Silverton, TX
Arkansas-born Miner Crawford became Briscoe County's first sheriff when it organized in 1892, later serving additional terms in 1913–1914 and 1921–1922. His first official act was arresting two horse thieves from New Mexico, and in his last term he and two deputies won a gun battle and seized a moonshine still. Remembered as bringing law and order while "bearing the stamp of a gentleman," he died in 1928.
Briscoe County
Silverton, TX
Created in 1876 and organized in 1892, Briscoe County honors Andrew Briscoe, a defender of Texas liberty who fought at the Battle of Concepción, the capture of Bexar, and San Jacinto before serving as chief justice of Harris County. Carved from the vast Bexar Territory, the county took shape as settlement pushed into the Texas Panhandle, with Silverton as its seat. Its very name links this frontier land to the generation that won Texas independence.