New Prospect Baptist Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker tells this one, and I'm just the voice that carries it down the road. Out here in Rusk County, on a piece of land that once belonged to the Hansel Wright Survey, there stands a place that holds two kinds of memory at once. A church, and a cemetery.

Both of them going back to the 1850s, both of them planted in East Texas soil by people who had traveled a long way to get here. That place is New Prospect Baptist Church. And the story of how it came to be is the story of people who brought their whole world with them when they moved.

Now, a good number of those early members had made the journey from Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Among the organizers were Thomas Ballenger, born in 1811 and gone in 1882, and B.F. Montgomery, born in 1810 and not leaving this world until 1900.

These were men who knew where they came from, and they wanted to remember it. So when they named this new congregation, they named it in honor of a church back home in South Carolina. New Prospect.

An old name, carried into new territory. In 1855, the congregation obtained its first property here from a man named Miles Yandle, who happened to be the son-in-law of Hansel Wright himself, the very man whose survey covers this ground. The burial ground beside the church holds the graves of many pioneer settlers and members of the fellowship.

Some names remembered, some maybe only by the stones. But they are there, on the Hansel Wright Survey, in Rusk County, Texas, a long way from Spartanburg County and yet, somehow, not so far at all.

What the marker says

Located on part of the Hansel Wright Survey, this congregation and cemetery were established in the 1850s. Many early church members, including organizers Thomas Ballenger (1811-1882) and B.F. Montgomery (1810-1900), migrated to the area from Spartanburg County, South Carolina. This site was named in honor of a church in their home state. The first property here was obtained in 1855 from Miles Yandle, the son-in-law of Hansel Wright. The burial ground contains the graves of many pioneer settlers and members of the fellowship.