King Baptist Church
King, Coryell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This church traces its history to 1875, when a Baptist congregation organized and held worship services in the Stringtown log schoolhouse. Baptism services were conducted at Cowhouse Creek. In 1880 Monroe and Mary Puett deeded two acres of land to the Baptist Church. A new sanctuary was built in 1901 using volunteer labor. In the 1930's the church changed its name to King Baptist Church. Weekly services began in 1951. Church members built a new sanctuary and educational facilities in 1974. The church has served the area for more than 120 years. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This congregation began in 1875 when Baptists gathered to worship in the Stringtown log schoolhouse and baptized converts in Cowhouse Creek. A land gift from Monroe and Mary Puett in 1880 gave the church a home, and a new sanctuary rose in 1901 through volunteer labor; the congregation took the name King Baptist Church in the 1930s. Rebuilt again in 1974, it has served this corner of Coryell County for well over a century.
Why it matters
The frontier congregation that meets first in a schoolhouse and then builds its own sanctuary by hand is a template of how rural American communities put down roots and endured.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
King Cemetery
Gatesville, TX
This burial ground was already in use before it was formally deeded in 1880 to the Stringtown Baptist Church for church and school purposes, with a number of graves dating to 1873 and unmarked burials likely older still. For generations, residents of the King community gave their time and money to tend the site, and a cemetery association organized in 1960 to sustain the effort. Today descendants support a trust fund to preserve it.
Bethel Heights Baptist Church
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German immigrants who came to Texas in the 1880s founded this congregation in 1886 as the German Bethel Baptist Church, meeting in a schoolhouse near Coryell City under Rev. Julius E. Sydow. As the German Baptist population grew, the group split into two churches, built a house of worship on land bought from Ludwig Voss, and kept its records in German for decades. During World War I the congregation pledged loyalty and sold war bonds, and during World War II it shifted to English-language services and took the name Bethel Heights Baptist Church.
Slater Cemetery
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The Slater Cemetery is nearly all that survives of a once-thriving farming and ranching community that took root in Coryell County in the late 1800s. By the early 1900s Slater supported two churches, a post office, a school, and businesses. In 1907 James and Ellen Martin donated land for a free burial ground, and their son Curry, buried that year, lies in its oldest marked grave.
Pidcoke Cemetery
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Serving the ranching communities of Pidcoke and Harman, this cemetery dates to at least 1885, when six-year-old Mattie Jeter was buried here after a fatal fall from a wagon. Local landowners deeded the ground formally in 1896, and generations of the founding families lie here, their stock-raising economy sustaining the area until the 1942 creation of Camp Hood forced many families to relocate. Among the graves are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.