Roane Baptist Church
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This church was organized in 1897 by 26 charter members. The Reverend E. T. Jones served as the first pastor, conducting monthly worship services in the Roane School building. A church building was erected in 1901 on land donated by Sam Brooks and Zeb Burke. The congregation, which employed its first full-time pastor in 1948, supports community outreach programs and traditional activities for its members. Improvements to the church property were made over time to accommodate a growing membership. The church remains an integral part of the community. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Roane Baptist Church was organized in 1897 by 26 charter members, who first worshiped monthly in the Roane School building under their first pastor, the Rev. E. T. Jones. In 1901 they built a church of their own on land donated by two local men, and the congregation called its first full-time pastor in 1948. Improved over the years, the church remains an integral part of its community.
Why it matters
It represents the small rural congregations that, meeting first in shared schoolhouses, formed the social backbone of countless Texas farm communities.
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Related people
- · Rev. E. T. Jones
- · Sam Brooks
- · Zeb Burke
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Chatfield Baptist Church
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Before the Civil War, enslaved people on Robert Hodge's Navarro County plantation organized their own Baptist and A.M.E. congregations, worshipping in a shared building even as white pastors preached to separate Black and white audiences. After emancipation many freedpeople stayed on as sharecroppers and landowners, and the Baptist congregation endured. Among its sons was Sutton E. Griggs, born in Chatfield in 1872, who became a noted African American minister and novelist, following his father Allen R. Griggs, a champion of Black education in Texas.
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