HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil WarReconstruction & Gilded Age

Macedonia Hix Baptist Church

Caldwell, Burleson County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Traveling ministers conducted services in this area during the 1840s. The church was organized about 1852 and located on land belonging to Ezra Webb. Oldest marked grave in the adjacent cemetery is that of Elder W. G. O'Bryan, who died in 1867. The first church building was torn down in 1879 and another built on nearby land donated by J .W. Porter. The present structure was erected in 1928. Summer revival meetings, originally held in a brush arbor, often attracted large crowds. The Rev. A. S. Broaddus (1879-1963) ministered to this congregation for about 40 years, 1913-53.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Traveling ministers first brought services to this part of Burleson County in the 1840s, and by about 1852 a Baptist congregation had formed on Ezra Webb's land. The church replaced its first building in 1879 and again in 1928, while summer revivals—first held under a brush arbor—drew large crowds. The Rev. A. S. Broaddus served the congregation for roughly forty years, from 1913 to 1953, a remarkable span in one pulpit.

Why it matters

The church traces the deep roots of rural religious life in Texas, from itinerant preachers and brush-arbor revivals to a settled congregation spanning generations.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · A. S. Broaddus
  • · W. G. O'Bryan
  • · Ezra Webb

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryChurch

Nearby & related markers

Fort Tenoxtitlan

Caldwell, TX

In July 1830 the Mexican government established Fort Tenoxtitlan near here, naming it for the Aztec capital in a bid to halt the flood of Anglo-American settlers pouring into Texas. The plan failed: troops abandoned the post by 1832, and a town nevertheless sprang up after 1834 that drew many prominent early Texans. Like many frontier settlements, it faded from the map, gone by 1860.

Waugh Campground

Caldwell, TX

Donated by the Baltimore-born Addison family, this Methodist camp-meeting ground honored Bishop Beverly Waugh, who presided over the first Methodist Conference in Texas. In the frontier decades it drew crowds for revivals and quarterly conferences—here the young B. H. Carroll, later a towering Baptist leader, was converted. Its open grounds also hosted secular events, most famously an 1857 debate between U.S. Senator Sam Houston and Judge A. S. Broaddus.

Cooks Point

Cooks Point, TX

Cooks Point took root about 1840 where a colonial road from the southeast met the old San Antonio Road, a natural crossroads in the earliest years of the Republic of Texas. Settler Gabriel Jackson kept a two-story log cabin trading post here, and the community took its name from surveyor Silas L. Cooke, who mapped much of the surrounding land. It endures today as a rural village.

Near Homesite of Judge Andrew S. Broaddus

Cooks Point, TX

Andrew S. Broaddus was already a Virginia legislator when, in 1854, he led a mile-long wagon train of some 200 people west to the Texas frontier, where the newcomers raised Salem Baptist Church as a piece of the home they'd left behind. A restless public man, he debated Sam Houston at a nearby campground, sat in the 1861 Secession Convention and several sessions of the Texas Legislature, and helped choose the site for what became Texas A&M. He closed his life as a district judge, father of thirteen, on the land near this spot.