Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give it to you straight. Way out in the eastern reaches of Panola County, there's a congregation with roots that run deep, and the story starts in 1880. That's when Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church was chartered, with just eight members to its name.

Eight souls. But two elders put their hands to the plow, a man named William H. Gresham and a man named J.

R. Alexander, and together they organized what would become a lasting piece of this county's religious heritage. Now Gresham, he was a Confederate veteran, and he didn't just help found this church, he served as its pastor all the way through 1897.

He passed in 1900, so the congregation carried on without him, but his mark was already made. For a good while, the members of Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church gathered about one mile southwest of where the church stands today. Then, in 1910, they moved to this very site and put up a new building.

And that building, well, it wasn't just a church. The second floor became a meeting place for the Woodmen of the World Lodge, so those walls held more than one kind of fellowship. Eight members in 1880, a new home in 1910, and all those years of influence spreading quietly across the eastern part of Panola County.

That's not nothing. That's how a congregation writes itself into the permanent record of a place.

What the marker says

Chartered in 1880 with eight members, this congregation was organized by Elders William H. Gresham and J. R. Alexander. A Confederate veteran, Gresham (d. 1900) served as pastor until 1897. Members of Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church met about one mile southwest of this site until they moved here in 1910. The second floor of the 1910 church building served as a meeting place for the Woodmen of the World Lodge. This church has had a strong influence in the eastern part of Panola County and is important to the area's religious heritage. (1985)