Old Palestine Baptist Church

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Old Palestine Baptist Church in Cherokee County. Now settle in, because some of the best stories start with just one man and a calling. The year was 1844, and a preacher by the name of Reverend Isaac Reed organized what would become one of those congregations that just refuses to quit.

They called it Mount Olive first, which has a certain biblical ring to it, and then the name shifted to Palestine, and that's the name that stuck. For ten years, this congregation had no building to call its own. Ten years of gathering in homes, pulling chairs close, singing and praying wherever someone had a roof and enough room.

That's not a hardship story, exactly. That's a community deciding that the people matter more than the walls. But by 1854, something changed.

A small church went up, and that same building doubled as a schoolhouse, which tells you something about how much work one structure was expected to do out on the Texas frontier. The land it stood on was donated by Captain and Mrs. Henry Berryman, and that act of generosity is the reason anything stands there at all.

The congregation didn't stop there. They kept building, kept growing, and the church standing on that site today is the third one to call that donated ground home. Three churches, one piece of land, and a story that reaches all the way back to 1844.

Reverend Isaac Reed started something that outlasted him by a long, long measure.

What the marker says

Organized 1844 by early preacher, Rev. Isaac Reed. First called Mount Olive, then Palestine. Worshipped in homes until 1854. Then small church (also used as school) was built on land donated by Capt. and Mrs. Henry Berryman. Third church now on site. (1966)