Little Hope Primitive Baptist Church
Jasper, Jasper County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Anglo settlement of this area began in the late 1830s. Traveling Methodist and Baptist missionaries occasionally conducted worship services for pioneer families in a building that served as the community's church and school. A new structure was erected in 1890, and the Little Hope Primitive Baptist Church was officially organized in 1893. Elder Durham Richardson served as first pastor. The church, school, and cemetery here have also been referred to by the name "Seed Tick," a popular term coined by area residents.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As Anglo settlers pushed into the East Texas Piney Woods in the late 1830s, traveling Methodist and Baptist preachers held services in a rough building that doubled as church and schoolhouse. A new structure went up in 1890, and the Little Hope Primitive Baptist Church was formally organized in 1893 under Elder Durham Richardson. Locals affectionately nicknamed the whole settlement "Seed Tick."
Why it matters
Frontier congregations like Little Hope were the social bedrock of pioneer Texas, where circuit-riding preachers and shared meetinghouses knit isolated families into lasting communities.
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Related people
- · Durham Richardson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Little Hope Cemetery
Jasper, TX
This graveyard began in sorrow on land granted to pioneer settler Samuel Goode in 1838, when his wife Frances was buried here in 1844. Samuel joined her two decades later, and their unmarked graves lie among the earliest burials in what grew into a community cemetery. The oldest marked stones date to 1884, and the grounds also hold victims of the influenza and diphtheria epidemics that swept East Texas in the early 1900s. Little Hope Cemetery remains a quiet witness to the settlers who built Jasper County.
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R. C. Doom House
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Campground Cemetery
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