First Baptist Church of Murphy

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, Murphy, Texas had been on the map for twelve years by the time 1900 rolled around; twelve years of neighbors and dirt roads and a community taking shape, but something was missing. No Baptist church.

And in a small Texas town, that's a gap you feel. Enter Mrs. May Cockrell.

Local resident, woman of purpose, and apparently the kind of person who, when she sees a thing that needs doing, opens her front door and gets it done. She saw the need for a Baptist church in Murphy, and she did not wait around for someone else to notice it first. She directed the formation of the congregation herself, and she hosted the organizational meeting right there in her own home.

Now picture that room. Her friends gathered around her. Among them, the Reverend G.W.

McCalla, a Baptist preacher who'd come down from Plano. And Bob Coleman, also of Plano, representing the Plano Star-Courier. Not a bad crowd for a living room meetin'.

And that same year, 1900, before the ink was even dry on the new congregation, Mrs. Louisa Brown donated land at this very site so the sanctuary could be built. Two women, one year, one community forever changed.

The marker notes that since 1900, this congregation has made many significant contributions to the community. That's the kind of sentence that carries a lot of weight in a few quiet words. Eighty-one years of it by the time anyone thought to put it in stone.

Some things get built with lumber and donated land. Some get built with one woman deciding the time is now.

What the marker says

In 1900, twelve years after the founding of Murphy, local resident Mrs. May Cockrell directed the formation of this congregation. Aware of the need for a Baptist church in the community, she hosted the organizational meeting in her home. Present were many of her friends, including the Rev. G.W. McCalla a Baptist preacher from Plano, and Bob Coleman of the Plano Star-Courier. The same year Mrs. Louisa Brown donated land at this site for construction of the sanctuary. Since 1900 the congregation has made many significant contributions to the community.** (1981)***