County Line Baptist Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about County Line Baptist Church and Cemetery in Morris County. Now, some places in Texas keep their records neat and tidy, right from the first day. And then there are places like County Line Baptist Church, where the story runs deeper than the paper trail.

The records go back to 1859, sure enough. But the marker will tell you straight: the church is believed to have been in existence some years before even that. How far back?

Well, that's the kind of question that keeps a campfire burning. The land itself might know, but it isn't saying. What we do know is this.

Out in that cemetery, the earliest marked headstone belongs to a three-year-old boy named John C. Leftwich. That stone was placed in 1863.

And the cemetery was probably already in use before that. Think on that a moment. A congregation gathering, a community forming, children being laid to rest, all of it quietly unfolding before the written record caught up.

Through the 1890s and right on into 1901, the log church building pulled double duty as the County Line Community School. Imagine the same rough-hewn walls holding a Sunday sermon one morning and a schoolroom lesson the next week. Then in 1901, a new church building went up.

A fresh start, solid timbers, a congregation looking forward. But time and Texas weather, they are patient adversaries. Age and storm damage together made their case, and by 1943, the congregation had to move to another facility.

Around that same time, something quiet changed in the cemetery. For years the grounds had been kept scraped earth, the old way, bare and tended. Now the congregation let the grass come in.

That's a kind of change that speaks without a word. Resting in that cemetery are a number of veterans of the United States Armed Forces, men and women who served in various military conflicts. They came home to Morris County, and Morris County kept them.

A cemetery association was finally formed in 1976 to look after the place with some official care. And here is where the marker lands it, simple and true. Both the church and the cemetery, it says, are chronicles of Morris County history.

Not monuments to one family, not trophies of one era. Chronicles. The whole long, layered, sometimes undocumented story of a community that was there before the ink, and is still there now.

What the marker says

County Line Baptist Church records date back to 1859, but the church is believed to have been in existence some years earlier. The cemetery probably was already in use prior to 1863, when the earliest marked headstone was placed on this site for three-year-old John C. Leftwich. From the 1890s to 1901, County Line Community School met in the log church. A new church building was erected in 1901. Age and storm damage necessitated a move to another facility in 1943. The congregation began to allow grass to grow on the formerly scraped-earth cemetery grounds about that time. A number of veterans of the U. S. Armed Forces and various military conflicts are interred here. A cemetery association was formed in 1976. Both church and cemetery are chronicles of Morris County history. (2000)