Tripp Baptist Church
Sunnyvale, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Pioneers arrived in this area as early as 1845, establishing small settlements that developed over time into the Tripp, Long Creek, Hatterville and New Hope communities. By 1882, Tripp residents attended church services in the local schoolhouse. C.J. Washmon, who owned a local grocery store, served as an early pastor for what became Tripp Baptist Church. In 1906, the congregation began collecting donations to build a new sanctuary, and in 1916 Kaufman County resident Richard Linn donated the property. The building, dedicated in 1918, was also used by the local Assembly of God congregation. In 1954, the Baptists remodeled the original white frame structure, adding a brick façade as well as three classrooms, a pastor's study and a nursery. Later additions included a bell tower. Early church activities included summer revivals held under brush arbors, often in conjunction with other churches, and baptisms conducted in area creeks, ponds and cotton gin tanks. Over the years, congregation members have also participated in dinners, Christmas nativities and educational programs, and the church has regularly contributed to home, state and foreign missions, and continued in service to its members and its community. In the 1950s, Tripp consolidated with the neighboring towns of Long Creek, Hatterville and New Hope to form the city of Sunnyvale. For decades, the communities had shared resources, including the Long Creek Cemetery, where many church members are buried. Today, the history of Sunnyvale is comprised of the stories from each community, including the long-standing institution that is Tripp Baptist Church. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Pioneers reached this area as early as 1845, forming the Tripp, Long Creek, Hatterville, and New Hope settlements, and by 1882 Tripp residents were worshipping in the local schoolhouse under grocer-turned-pastor C.J. Washmon. The congregation dedicated its own sanctuary in 1918, sharing it at first with an Assembly of God group, and its members held brush-arbor revivals and creek-side baptisms for generations. When the surrounding communities consolidated into the City of Sunnyvale in the 1950s, Tripp Baptist endured as one of their oldest institutions.
Why it matters
Tripp Baptist Church preserves the memory of vanished pioneer settlements, showing how rural congregations outlast the communities that founded them and become keepers of local history.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · C.J. Washmon
- · Richard Linn
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Long Creek Cemetery
Sunnyvale, TX
Long Creek Cemetery grew out of the mid-19th-century Mercer Colony settlement, where Black Hawk War veteran Capt. A. Webb established a homestead and was joined by his father-in-law, War of 1812 veteran Benjamin Crownover. The first burial came in 1855, when Crownover's daughter Leona Caldwell was laid to rest beneath a pecan tree; Webb later deeded land for a school, church, and public burial ground that became the heart of the Long Creek community. Generations of area families, ministers, teachers, and members of fraternal orders lie here, and an association formed in 1910 still tends the grounds.
Galloways' Old Home Place
Sunnyvale, TX
Confederate veteran Benjamin Franklin Galloway and his wife Eliza came from Tennessee to settle this Dallas County land after the Civil War. They built the first three rooms of their farmhouse in 1875–76, and Galloway enlarged it in 1888. Generations later the family still preserves the home as a link to the region's pioneer farming past.
First Baptist Church of Sunnyvale
Sunnyvale, TX
Chartered as New Hope Baptist Church on July 3, 1904 with thirteen members under Dr. James B. Gambrell of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, this congregation grew alongside the community around it. When the surrounding settlements incorporated as the City of Sunnyvale in 1953, the church eventually took the town's name, and in 1978 it moved to its present site.
Lawrence Farmstead
Mesquite, TX
Stephen Decatur Lawrence, son of an original Mercer colony settler, received about 640 acres on his twenty-first birthday and began building here in 1874, adding a T-plan clapboard house in 1882 that grew into a striking Victorian home with a central tower and steeply pitched roof. Barns, a smokehouse, a root cellar, and a wash house rounded out a working blackland-prairie farmstead where Lawrence raised eleven children across two marriages. The family held the land until 1995, when part of it became a city historical park.