First Baptist Church of Zephyr
Zephyr, Brown County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The organizational meeting for this congregation was held at the home of John J. Driskill in 1886. The twelve charter members were first led by Pastor J. B. Greenfield, who served only one month, and then by J. A. Jarrett. The Baptist fellowship erected its first sanctuary in 1892. Members rebuilt their church home following the devastating tornado of 1909. During its early history, First Baptist Church of Zephyr held revivals under the Zephyr Gospel tabernacle. Descendants of many of the early members still worship here. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the Central Texas ranching country of Brown County, twelve settlers gathered in John J. Driskill's home in 1886 to organize a Baptist congregation. They raised their first sanctuary in 1892, rebuilt after a devastating 1909 tornado, and held frontier revivals under the Zephyr Gospel tabernacle. More than a century later, descendants of those charter families still fill the pews.
Why it matters
Small country churches like this were the social and spiritual anchors of newly settled Texas communities, binding scattered farm families into a town.
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Related people
- · John J. Driskill
- · J. B. Greenfield
- · J. A. Jarrett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Zephyr Cemetery
Zephyr, TX
The town of Zephyr took shape in the 1860s on early land grants, gaining a school in the 1870s, churches, businesses, and weekly mail from Brownwood, while this cemetery served the area from the same decade. Among its graves are veterans of six American wars, from the Mexican War through Vietnam, and thirty-three victims of the catastrophic tornado of May 29, 1909, which nearly wiped the town off the map. Now grown past seven acres, the burial ground endures as a monument to the community's resilience.
Jenkins Springs Cemetery
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Richardson Jenkins, one of Brown County's earliest pioneers, settled a farm northeast of Brownwood whose spring took his name and later served the local school and church. The county's earliest known graves here belong to four army surveyors ambushed and killed nearby, and Jenkins himself, who died in 1867, has the first marked grave; veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam also rest in the cemetery.
Antioch Cemetery
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Antioch Cemetery grew out of a late-19th-century farming community in Brown County, on land the Grazier family deeded to the county in 1880 for schooling and burials. A combined church-and-school building nearby made the site a hub of frontier community life before the district eventually folded into the Blanket schools. Its earliest marked graves date to 1881, and among those interred are Civil War veterans and other pioneers who built the settlement.
Elkins Cemetery
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This burial ground began in 1876, the year pioneer minister Noah T. Byars helped found Live Oak Baptist Church and Civil War veteran Silas H. Wood settled his family here from Mississippi. Wood deeded the graveyard to the church in 1884, and it grew alongside a community known first as Gholson and later Elkins. Interments paused during World War II when Camp Bowie displaced the town, then resumed after the camp closed in 1947.