Old First Baptist Church

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'll let the details speak for themselves. Way up in Potter County, sixteen charter members got together in September of 1889 and organized what would become the Old First Baptist Church. Sixteen people.

That's it. That's your foundation. The following year, 1890, they built themselves a meeting house right there at 500 Pierce, and what they put up said everything you need to know about the kind of folks they were.

The first belfry wasn't iron, wasn't stone. It was cedar posts. They worked with what the land gave them.

The baptistry, now there's a detail worth savoring. No pipes, no pump. Water buckets.

Members hauling water, bucket by bucket, to fill that baptistry. And in wintertime, when the Texas Panhandle decided to remind everyone who was actually in charge, they warmed that water with hot rocks. Hot rocks in the baptistry.

You picture that for a moment. The Ladies Aid Society was right at the heart of this congregation, and among its members was a Mrs. B.T.

Ware. Now Mrs. Ware apparently made her rounds with such faithful regularity that her horse, her actual horse, learned the route by heart.

That animal stopped so automatically at certain homes along the way that the congregation took to calling him John the Baptist. A horse named John the Baptist. That is a detail you cannot make up, and nobody had to.

The marker doesn't ask you to. The building itself was eventually moved and restored, and in May of 1964, during the congregation's Diamond Jubilee, it was rededicated. Seventy-five years from sixteen people with cedar posts and water buckets, to a Diamond Jubilee.

The church endured. So did the story of the horse.

What the marker says

Organized September 1889 by 16 charter members. In 1890 built this meeting house at 500 Pierce. First belfry consisted of cedar posts. Baptistry was filled by water buckets, while hot rocks warmed it in wintertime. Ladies Aid Society members included Mrs. B.T. Ware, whose horse stopped so automatically at some homes that he was known as "John the Baptist". Building moved and restored, then rededicated during Diamond Jubilee, May 1964. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964.