Founding Site of First Baptist Church of Goliad
Goliad, Goliad County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A group of twelve Baptists met under an oak tree one block west of the Goliad town square on this site in May 1849. The Rev. John Freeman Hillyer officiated at the meeting, during which the twelve organized the first Baptist church in the area. The charter members included the pastor's wife, Mary, and their children Ann and Hamilton B. Hillyer; Hillyer family slaves Jacob and Eliza; Pryor and Mary Lea; George Brightman and his daughter Emeline Russell; and William and Philania Crow. The group established membership in the Colorado Baptist Association by 1852. After fifty years of meeting in borrowed facilities, the congregation's first permanent home was erected in 1899. The First Baptist church of Goliad continues to serve the area. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On this spot in May 1849, twelve Baptists gathered under an oak tree a block west of the Goliad square to organize the area's first Baptist church, led by the Rev. John Freeman Hillyer. The charter roll reflects the antebellum South it grew from: alongside the pastor's family and neighbors like the Leas and Crows were two enslaved people, Jacob and Eliza, counted among the founding members. The congregation joined the Colorado Baptist Association by 1852 and finally built a permanent home in 1899 after fifty years in borrowed rooms.
Why it matters
The founding record—free and enslaved worshipers listed together—captures the entangled realities of religion and slavery in antebellum Texas that Emancipation would later force apart.
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Related people
- · Rev. John Freeman Hillyer
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church of Goliad
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Organized in the 1840s when Goliad was a young frontier town, this Methodist congregation first worshipped in a private home alongside Presbyterians before raising its own building around 1852. By 1859 the Goliad Circuit claimed the largest membership in its conference, and Black and white members worshipped together until 1872, when Goliad's first African American church was organized. An F4 tornado leveled the building in 1902, and it was rebuilt from the salvaged wood to a Gothic design by Danish-born architect Jules Leffland.
Fannin Street United Methodist Church
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Founded in 1872, Fannin Street United Methodist Church was one of the earliest African American congregations in Goliad County, established after emancipation as freedpeople who had worshiped alongside their enslavers formed churches of their own. The small country church—steeply gabled with a four-sided cupola and a Cincinnati-cast bell—weathered a string of catastrophes, most terribly the 1902 tornado that destroyed the building and killed fifty parishioners. Rebuilt in 1903 and struck again by lightning in 1976, the congregation endured, living out its motto that "the church is not the building; it's the people."
Lott Cemetery
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Union Missionary Baptist Church
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