Bazette Baptist Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out in Navarro County, there's a place called Bazette, and it carries a name that goes back before the Civil War. Named for a Baptist preacher, this little farming settlement took root in the soil of early Texas and just kept growing.

Now, the exact origins of the congregation are a little hazy, the way old things often are, but the marker says it may have formed as early as the 1860s. Back then it went by Liberty Missionary Baptist Church. That name alone tells you something about what those early settlers were reaching for.

Liberty. A missionary spirit. A community of faith out on the Texas plain.

Then comes 1881, and a man named William Ellison steps into the story. Ellison, born in 1840, was the postmaster and the store owner, which is to say he was about as central to that community as a person could be. And in 1881, he deeded land right at this very site for the community's Baptist church.

That's not a small thing. That's a man planting something he expects to last. And last it did.

Nine years on, in 1890, the deacons went a step further. They purchased adjoining land from a man named J. L.

Jennings, and with that ground, they established a cemetery. A place for the living to tend, and a place for the departed to rest. The oldest marked grave there belongs to Jhonnie Hiett, born in 1881, gone by 1891.

Ten short years. That grave has stood as the oldest marked one in that cemetery ever since, a quiet, solemn anchor to everything that came before and everything that followed. William Ellison himself passed in 1906, his name now woven into the founding story of this place.

The church and the cemetery both still stand, reminders, the marker calls them, of the area's early history. And out here on a Texas road, that's exactly what they are. Roots sunk deep, names carved in stone, a congregation that may have begun before the war and endured long after it.

Some things in Texas, you just don't pull up.

What the marker says

The early farming settlement of Bazette, named for a Baptist preacher, developed before the Civil War. In 1881, postmaster and store owner William Ellison (1840-1906) deeded land at this site for the community's Baptist church. First known as Liberty Missionary Baptist Church, the congregation may have formed as early as the 1860s. In 1890, the deacons purchased adjoining land from J. L. Jennings for the establishment of a cemetery. The oldest marked grave is that of Jhonnie Hiett (1881-1891). The church and cemetery serve as reminders of the area's early history. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986