DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official Rocky Springs Missionary Baptist Church marker has to say — and friend, this one is worth pulling over for. April 8, 1848. That's the date you want to hold onto.
A group of settlers gathered in the home of a man named Thomas J. Lindsey, out here in Cherokee County, and under the guidance of Elder Walter Ross, they organized what would become Rocky Springs Missionary Baptist Church. Now count back three years from 1848 and you land right at the moment Texas was admitted to the Union — and the marker tells us these very people had immigrated to this area just that recently.
True pioneers, it calls them, and it means it. The charter members read like a roll call of the early Texas frontier. Minerva Crenshaw.
Frances Halbert, John Halbert, Sally Margaret Halbert, Stephen Halbert. John Harris, who came in already holding the title of ordained deacon. Lucy Johnston, Thomas Johnston.
Bathsheba Lindsey — now there's a name that belongs in a story — Elizabeth Lindsey, J. J. Lindsey, and Thomas J.
Lindsey himself, whose home was the birthplace of the whole endeavor. Isaac Sheppard, Seary Sheppard, and Wylie Thomason. Fifteen known charter members, every one of them fresh to a land that was itself fresh to the United States.
And who did they call as their first pastor? A man by the name of the Reverend George Washington Slover. The marker says he was said to have built the Atlanta Hotel — the very one depicted in the Civil War novel Gone with the Wind.
Whether that piece of the story gives you chills or just a good long pause, well, that's between you and the telling. Soon after that organizational meeting, a log cabin was erected right here on the present site — a place of worship rising up out of the East Texas timber. The bubbling springs here and at the Lindsey home probably inspired the church's name, the marker says.
Rocky Springs. You can almost hear it. The cemetery came along in the early days too, and the oldest legible headstone standing in it is dated 1849 — not even a full year after those fifteen pioneers sat down together in Thomas Lindsey's home and decided to build something that would last.
The original log church gave way in a few years to the present structure. Then in 1950, Sunday School rooms were added to it. More than a hundred years of life layered onto those same grounds, those same springs still bubbling underneath it all.
Some places carry their history quietly. Rocky Springs Missionary Baptist Church carries it right out in the open, in every stone and every name.
What the marker says
Organized April 8, 1848, by a group of settlers from this area, in the home of Thomas J. Lindsey, under Elder Walter Ross. The known charter members included Minerva Crenshaw, Frances Halbert, John Halbert, Sally Margaret Halbert, Stephen Halbert, John Harris (an ordained deacon), Lucy Johnston, Thomas Johnston, Bathsheba Lindsey, Elizabeth Lindsey, J. J. Lindsey, Thomas J. Lindsey, Isaac Sheppard, Seary Sheppard, and Wylie Thomason. True pioneers, these people had immigrated to the area just three years earlier, when Texas was admitted to the Union. The Rev. George Washington Slover, said to have built the Atlanta Hotel depicted in the Civil War novel "Gone with the Wind", was the first pastor. Soon after the organizational meeting, a log cabin was erected on the present site to serve as a place of worship. The bubbling springs here and at the Lindsey home probably inspired the church name. The cemetery originated in the early days of the church; the oldest legible headstone is dated 1849. The original log church building was replaced in a few years by the present structure and in 1950, Sunday School rooms were added to it.