Merriman Baptist Church
Ranger vicinity, Eastland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Local Baptists met in private homes for many years between the nomination of Merriman as the county seat in 1874 and the organization of the Merriman Baptist Church in 1892. The charter members were Edmond Duncan, Fannie Duncan, Josie Duncan, Ozella Duncan, T. W. Duncan, Cles Hollaway, H. A. Inman, George Moss, C. J. Pugh, B. R. Williams, I. B. Williams, Virginia Williams and S. Williams. They called J. L Mays as their first pastor. The congregation erected a small church house in 1893 and a wood frame meeting house in 1903. An oil boom hit the area in 1917. Trustees of the 29-member Merriman Baptist Church leased drilling rights on the property. When the derrick struck oil, the well began to earn $300 to $400 per day. The congregation kept a small amount for operating expenses and gave the rest to various Baptist organizations and charities. For some time, the church was able to give about $100,000 a year to domestic and foreign missions, the Buckner Orphans Home, Dallas and Houston sanitariums, Simmons College, Old Ministers Relief, Baptist Standard Publishing Company, Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary, Christian education and other causes. The noise of oil drilling operations in the area became disruptive to church services in 1918. The congregation built a tabernacle in the area in which services were held until 1922 when they erected a new brick edifice. The Merriman Baptist Church boasted two hundred and twenty-five members in 1999, seven of whom were descended from the 1918 membership, and continued to meet in the structure erected 75 years before. The church continues to serve the area. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Local Baptists met in private homes for years before organizing the Merriman Baptist Church in 1892 and raising a small frame meeting house. When an oil boom struck in 1917, the congregation leased its drilling rights, and a gusher soon earned the church hundreds of dollars a day. Keeping only what it needed to operate, the small congregation gave roughly $100,000 a year to missions, orphanages, seminaries, and charities. Drilling noise eventually drove services to a tabernacle, and in 1922 the members built a brick sanctuary they still used generations later.
Why it matters
Merriman is a remarkable episode of the Texas oil boom, when a tiny country congregation turned an underground fortune into one of the era's most generous charitable engines.
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Related people
- · J. L. Mays
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Merriman Cemetery
Ranger, TX
Begun around 1873 as a community graveyard just as Eastland County was organized, this cemetery holds early settlers, flu victims from the 1916–17 epidemic, and veterans of conflicts from the Civil War to Korea. The 1917 oil strike on nearby land triggered a boom, and speculators reportedly offered a large sum to lease the burial ground for drilling—an offer the local congregation refused, preserving the site's sanctity.
Site of J.H. McCleskey No. 1, Discovery Well of the Ranger Oil Boom
Ranger, TX
By 1917 area farmers and ranchers were reeling from drought and boll weevils when Texas and Pacific Coal Company manager William Knox Gordon bet that oil lay far deeper than earlier dry holes had reached. Contractor Warren Wagner drilled here on J. H. McCleskey's farm, and on October 17, 1917, at 3,432 feet the well roared in at an estimated 1,600 barrels a day. It ignited the wild, prolific Ranger boom, whose oil helped relieve wartime shortages and let the Allies, as the saying went, 'float to victory on a wave of oil.'
First Oil Well Drilled in Eastland County
Ranger, TX
On a Texas afternoon in the fall of 1917, the McCleskey No. 1 came in gushing, and the sleepy town of Ranger was never the same. Drilled through that summer and autumn under the eye of W.K. Gordon of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company, the well opened the Ranger Pool and touched off one of the great oil booms of the World War I era. It flowed for thirteen years before being capped, having produced hundreds of thousands of barrels.
Roaring Ranger
Ranger, TX
When World War I drove oil demand sky-high, Texas Pacific Coal Company manager W.K. Gordon gambled on deep drilling, and in October 1917 the McClesky No. 1 blew in as a 1,700-barrel-a-day gusher a mile south of here. Later wells yielded many thousands of barrels daily, and a village of a dozen houses exploded into a boomtown so crowded that beds were shared in shifts and stuffed chairs were rented for sleeping. Amid a two-year sea of mud, easy money drew both fortune-seekers and vice, until lawmen cracked down after five murders in a single day.