DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. The First Baptist Church of Austin didn't just appear one Sunday morning like a wildflower after rain. It had a beginning — a real, dateable, human beginning.
July of 1847, and the man behind it was the Reverend R. H. Taliaferro, come all the way down from Kentucky to plant something lasting in the Texas soil.
And lasting it was. Now, when you're starting a church and you need a roof over your heads, you make do with what the town has to offer. What Austin had to offer, in those early days, was the Capitol.
That's right — worship services held right there in the seat of Texas government. You can imagine the particular feeling of that, praying under the same roof where the laws of the state were being hammered out. Eventually the congregation moved to a frame building over at 12th and Lavaca, and then they were gathering in the 700 block of Congress Avenue.
They were a congregation on the move, building momentum, and by 1857 they were ready to put down roots — right here, on this very site — with their first sanctuary. They remodeled it in the 1880s, kept growing, kept filling the pews. Then came 1916 and a larger brick church rose up on the same ground.
Governors worshiped here. State officials. Prominent Austin families, generation after generation, filed through those doors.
That brick church stood until 1970, when the congregation moved on to 9th and Trinity — and the building was razed. Gone now, but not forgotten. A congregation that started in a borrowed Capitol and ended up shaping the spiritual life of a capital city.
The Reverend Taliaferro would probably say that's not a bad run.
What the marker says
The Rev. R. H. Taliaferro of Kentucky organized the First Baptist Church in July 1847. Worship services were first held in the Capitol and later moved to a frame building at 12th and Lavaca. The congregation met in the 700 block of Congress Avenue until it built its first sanctuary at this site in 1857. The structure was remodeled in the 1880s. A larger brick church was constructed here in 1916. It was razed when the congregation moved to 9th and Trinity in 1970. Many governors, state officials, and prominent Austin families worshiped at this location. (1985)