First Baptist Church
Greenville, Hunt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized Sept. 1858 in local Masonic Hall by Baptist missionary John R. Briscoe and Elder W. M. Pickett with 19 charter members: Lewis W., Rebecca, Susan C., and Martha Matilda (Tillie) Moore; Nancy Moore Hines; Andrew and Mary McDonald; Ellen D. Langford; Mary Reneau; Margaret Moody; Julia Cole; John, D. H., Margaret, and Sarah Miller; Louise and J. C. Moses; Wiley A. and Sarah Mattox. Briscoe served temporarily as pastor. The first convert was Eliza Stevens, a slave. During the Civil War the congregation moved to Center Point (3 miles SE), and later returned to Greenville, meeting in the courthouse, shared by all faiths. First church building was a small frame house on a lot(1 block SE) donated by A. D. Robey and W. M. Arnold in 1873. The house burned in 1886, and a large frame structure was erected in 1887 on this block. In 1895, the church sponsored the establishment of Burleson College, a local private school, which was transferred to the State Baptist Convention in 1899. The cornerstone of a brick edifice, constructed on this site in 1905, is displayed here. Eight other local Baptist churches have spawned from this congregation. The present sanctuary was dedicated Dec. 10, 1967, and serves over 2,000 members.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in a Masonic hall in 1858 with nineteen charter members, Greenville's First Baptist Church took root just before the Civil War, during which the congregation withdrew to nearby Center Point before returning to town. Its records note that its first convert was Eliza Stevens, an enslaved woman. The church raised its first building in 1873, helped found Burleson College in 1895, and gave rise to eight other Baptist congregations over the decades.
Why it matters
A frontier congregation's story — its wartime displacement, its enslaved and free members, and its founding of a college — shows how churches served as the organizing institutions of new Texas communities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1858 Greenville was a young town in North Texas, part of a wave of settlement that pushed into the region's prairies and timberlands in the years after statehood. Churches often formed before their communities had buildings for them. This congregation first met in a Masonic hall, which was a common arrangement when a lodge might be the only suitable meeting room in town.
This was also a slaveholding society on the edge of war. Many Southern congregations before the war included both enslaved and free members, who worshipped under the same roof but not as equals. Within three years of the church's founding, Texas had seceded, and the war disrupted ordinary life, including church life.
The decades after the war brought rebuilding and growth. Towns like Greenville grew as farming and trade expanded, and Protestant churches became central institutions, founding schools and starting new congregations as the population spread.
People & events
The church began with a Baptist missionary, John R. Briscoe, and Elder W. M. Pickett, who gathered nineteen charter members in September 1858. The inscription lists them by name: the Moores, Millers, McDonalds, Moseses, Mattoxes, and others. Whole families joined together, which shows how closely church and kinship were tied on the frontier. Briscoe served as pastor for a time while the young congregation got established.
The church's first convert was Eliza Stevens, an enslaved woman. The marker preserves her name, which is something the historical record often failed to do for enslaved people. Her membership points to the complicated reality of Southern churches of that era, where the enslaved could share a faith and a congregation while being denied their freedom. We know little more about her from this marker, and it is better to honor her by remembering her name than to invent a story for her.
The war sent the congregation to Center Point, a few miles southeast. Afterward it returned to Greenville and met in the courthouse, which all faiths shared. A first frame building went up in 1873 on land donated by A. D. Robey and W. M. Arnold. It burned in 1886, and a larger church replaced it the next year. In 1895 the church sponsored Burleson College, a local private school that was transferred to the State Baptist Convention in 1899. A brick church followed in 1905, and its cornerstone is on display here. Over the years eight other Baptist churches grew out of this congregation, and the present sanctuary, dedicated in 1967, serves more than two thousand members.
Its place in the American story
This church's story is a small-scale version of how American towns were organized. Before there were city halls or public colleges, congregations brought people together, raised money, built buildings, and founded schools. This church's support of Burleson College fits a long American pattern of religious groups creating higher education.
Eliza Stevens's name ties the congregation to the larger history of slavery and faith in the South. Across the region, enslaved people joined churches, found community and meaning in them, and after emancipation often founded their own congregations. That movement grew into the independent Black church, one of the most important institutions in American history.
The church's many moves, from lodge hall to Center Point to a shared courthouse, and its fire and rebuilding, show how fragile and determined these early institutions were. Many American congregations share that history, but few record it this clearly.
If you visit
Look for the 1905 cornerstone from the earlier brick church. It is the most tangible link to the congregation's past on the site. The present sanctuary dates from 1967, so you are looking at a church that has rebuilt itself several times on or near this ground.
The inscription gives you a bit of a walking map. The first frame church stood about a block southeast. The wartime refuge at Center Point was three miles southeast. Standing here, you can picture the congregation's path across town and back again. Remember that this is an active church, so be respectful of services and gatherings.
Greenville is an easy drive from the Dallas area and fits well into a day exploring North Texas towns and their courthouse squares. Pair this stop with other local markers and you'll see how churches, schools, and civic buildings grew up together as the region went from frontier to settled farm country.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John R. Briscoe
- · W. M. Pickett
- · Eliza Stevens
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mary Jim Morris
Greenville, TX
Born in Georgia in 1876 and settled in Greenville by 1899, Mary Jim Morris earned her teaching certificate at a county institute for Black teachers just as African American children were first gaining access to schools in Hunt County. She taught for 45 years at Greenville's segregated schools, earned her college degree from Prairie View A&M in 1934, and in 1930 became principal of Fred Douglass Elementary. A devoted missionary at New Hope Baptist Church, she pushed her students to outdo every other school in Texas.
Douglass School
Greenville, TX
Established in Greenville's historic East Hill Community in the early 1900s, this was one of three schools for Black children during segregation, first known as the East Colored School. It was renamed for Frederick Douglass in 1928 when a new brick building rose, and it taught grades one through eight for the African American community. In 1930 Mary J. Morris became principal here—the first African American woman to hold that role in Greenville.
Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Greenville, TX
Born amid the violence and upheaval of Reconstruction, Center Point Christian Church grew from the survival of formerly enslaved families who gathered in the thickets of Hunt County on land no one else wanted. Charlie Haley led early religious meetings until, in 1879, he and the ordained elder Andrew Jackson Hurdle organized a congregation in the middle of those thickets, with Hurdle as its first minister. The church became a pillar of its freedom colony — championing education, jobs, and homes, and even helping staff a Black theological and industrial college — and made a point of building its meeting houses debt-free.
St. Paul School
Neylandville, TX
Neylandville grew from the land bought by James Brigham, a formerly enslaved man who purchased his family's freedom and then farmland here in the 1850s; after emancipation, other Black families settled around him, naming the community for Robert Neyland, from whom Brigham had bought his freedom. A school that began at St. Paul Baptist Church became the leading educational center for Black children in the surrounding area, formalized as the St. Paul Common School District by 1885. A new building rose here in 1918, and the school served until it joined the Commerce district in 1965.