Hewitt Baptist
Hewitt, McLennan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This congregation was organized on November 4, 1894, by 20 local members of White Hall Baptist Church (5 mi. NW) with the help of White Hall Pastor J.B. Reaves, and the Rev. J.L. Ward and the Rev.J.W. Thomas. Hewitt Baptist joined the Waco Baptist Association and built a sanctuary here in 1895. The 1895 church building was destroyed in a 1924 storm and replaced with a larger facility. Due to steady growth in its membership new worship centers were built here in 1959 and in 1988. Hewitt Baptist Church sponsors a variety of ministries and continues its historic role in the community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In November 1894, twenty members of the older White Hall Baptist Church broke away to organize their own congregation on the growing prairie south of Waco, dedicating their first sanctuary here in 1895. A destructive 1924 storm leveled that building, and successive waves of growth carried the church through new worship centers in 1959 and 1988. The marker traces the arc of a small rural congregation that outlasted the storms and became a fixture of the Hewitt community.
Why it matters
Country churches like this one anchored the social and civic life of Central Texas farm communities, and their steady survival mirrors the slow suburban growth that later reshaped the towns around Waco.
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Related people
- · J.B. Reaves
- · J.L. Ward
- · J.W. Thomas
Related events
- · 1924 storm
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church of Hewitt
Hewitt, TX
Methodist settlers around Hewitt first worshiped at Stanford Chapel, organized about 1875, and shared a union Sunday school with local Baptists before the Northwest Texas Conference formed a Hewitt circuit in 1900. The Hewitt Methodist Church took shape that year, absorbing members of Stanford Chapel when it disbanded in 1912 and even moving its tabernacle into town for summer revivals. The congregation became a full station in 1953 and marked its centennial in 2000.
Stanford Chapel Cemetery
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White Hall Cemetery is all that remains of a once-thriving farming community in McLennan County. Its earliest marked graves date to 1877 on land deeded by Civil War veteran Capt. Burl Jones Kendrick, who owned 320 acres nearby and in 1899 gave an additional acre to the graveyard's trustees for a single dollar. As the first Baptist cemetery in the area, it holds the pioneers who built and buried a vanished community.
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