London Baptist Church
New London, Rusk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
London Baptist Church traces its history to 1856. By 1857 church members shared meeting facilities with the Odd Fellows Lodge in a jointly owned building located on the stagecoach route from Henderson to Waco. The structure was destroyed by fire in 1877. In 1897 a new building was constructed near the same location. When oil was discovered in the area in 1930, London became a boom town and the church prospered, as well. Throughout its history, London Baptist Church has served the community with a variety of worship, educational, and outreach programs.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1856 in the piney woods of East Texas, London Baptist Church took root in a frontier era when congregations often shared quarters — here with an Odd Fellows Lodge in a building along the Henderson-to-Waco stagecoach road. Fire claimed the structure in 1877, but the congregation rebuilt in 1897 and thrived when the great East Texas oil strike of 1930 turned sleepy London into a boom town. Through fire, rebuilding, and sudden petroleum prosperity, the church remained a fixture of community worship and outreach.
Why it matters
The church's arc mirrors the transformation of rural East Texas from a stagecoach frontier into an oil-boom landscape, showing how a single congregation can outlast the towns that rise and fall around it.
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Related events
- · East Texas oil boom of 1930
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
New London School Explosion
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On the afternoon of March 18, 1937, natural gas that had accumulated undetected beneath the New London Junior-Senior High School ignited, leveling the building and killing hundreds of students and teachers in one of the deadliest school disasters in American history. The final toll reached 311. Because the gas was odorless, no one had smelled the danger—prompting the Texas Legislature within weeks to mandate that a warning odor be added to natural gas.
Gaston Public School Complex
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Kilgore College Administration Building
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In 1935, with the East Texas oil field booming even as the Great Depression gripped the nation, Kilgore residents voted to found a junior college. Classes met in the high school until this building was finished in 1936 with help from the federal Public Works Administration. Designed by the San Antonio firm of Phelps and Dewees, the administration building is a fine example of the streamlined Art Moderne style of its day.
St. Luke's United Methodist Church
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