DUANE
Duane's take
The marker on the wall tells it — here's how Duane reads the story of Mount Arie, and Mount Ararat, Missionary Baptist Church. Now, Bartlett, Texas, in 1898 — picture a small farming community, cotton fields stretching out in every direction, and every fall, Black American laborers arriving to bring in the harvest. Two men, Thomas Sanders and Nelson Secret, along with their families, looked around at that community and decided something was missing.
So they reached out to the Reverend F. E. Garrett, all the way over in Temple, and asked him to help them build something that would last longer than any cotton season.
In June of 1898, Mount Arie Missionary Baptist Church was born. Among those first families standing at the founding were the Reverend W. M.
Muckleroy, Wallace Dotray, and C. A. Harris.
That small congregation put down roots on the Bell County side of Bartlett — right there on the county line, as if testing which ground would hold them best. Turns out, they needed sturdier ground than that. By 1910, the congregation had grown enough to make a move — crossing over to Brook Street on the Williamson County side of town.
That's the kind of growth that makes a community take notice. Now, not every chapter came easy. The years 1921 and 1933 — the marker calls them lean ones, and I'll trust that quiet understatement to carry all the weight it needs to.
But the church held. Then came 1953, and Brook Street had a problem — the land beneath the building had gone unstable, so the structure itself was moved over to Bowie Street. The congregation didn't scatter.
They moved. And through the 1960s and the 1970s, the building was modernized and membership increased dramatically. After 1977, the congregation began to integrate, and the diversity of the membership kept on growing.
And then — here's where it gets good — the eighth decade of the church's history brought something nobody quite expected. In 1980, the congregation moved into a brand new brick facility. That same year, somebody made a discovery: Mount Arie was an abbreviation.
An abbreviation for Mount Ararat — the mountain in the Old Testament where Noah's Ark came to rest. All those years, the name had been carrying that meaning inside it, waiting to be found. And so in 1980, the congregation changed the name to what it had always really been: Mount Ararat Missionary Baptist Church.
In June of 1998, exactly one hundred years after those first families gathered with the Reverend Garrett, the church celebrated its centennial. The congregation still supports widespread missionary and outreach programs. The membership and its diversity continue to increase.
Thomas Sanders and Nelson Secret called a preacher from Temple to help build something in a small farming town. What they built is still standing — still growing — still carrying its founders' traditions into the next century. That's not a lean year.
That's a legacy.
What the marker says
Bartlett was a small farming community in 1898. Black American laborers arrived each fall for the cotton harvest. Thomas Sanders and Nelson Secret and their families called the Reverend F. E. Garrett of Temple to help them establish Mount Arie Missionary Baptist Church in June 1898. Among the first families of the church were those of the Reverend W. M. Muckleroy, Wallace Dotray and C. A. Harris. The small congregation originally met on the Bell County side of Bartlett, but in 1910 had grown enough to prompt a move to Brook Street in Williamson County. The years 1921 and 1933 were lean ones. The church building was moved to Bowie Street in 1953 because of unstable land on its Brook Street site. The structure was modernized in the 1960s and 1970s. Membership increased dramatically, and the congregation began to integrate after 1977. The eighth decade of the church's history brought new developments. The congregation moved into a new brick facility in 1980, the same year the church name was changed to Mount Ararat Missionary Baptist Church after it was discovered that Mount Arie was an abbreviation for the name of the mountain on which Noah's Ark landed as depicted in the Old Testament. The Mount Ararat Missionary Baptist Church celebrated its centennial in June 1998. The congregation supports widespread missionary and outreach programs. The membership and its diversity continue to increase as the congregation carries on in the traditions of its founders. (1999)