Saint Mark Baptist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the one passing it along. Way back in 1879, two preachers had a vision and not much else. The Rev.

Dick White and a Rev. Jones; no grand building, no pews, no steeple catching the afternoon sun. Just prayer meetings, held in the homes of folks scattered across the area northeast of McKinney.

That's where this story starts. The very first church services weren't held in any church at all. They gathered on the farm of a man named Isaac Graves.

Think about that for a moment. A congregation findin' its footing right there on somebody's working land, under the wide Texas sky. Back then, the congregation went by a name that carried some weight all on its own: the Free Missionary Baptist Church.

But in 1886, the name changed to Saint Mark Baptist Church, and that same year, as if the new name needed to be backed up with action, the church purchased this very property and built a brush arbor right on it. A one-room frame building followed; that was the first real sanctuary. Modest, yes.

But it was theirs. Now, fast forward through decades of Sundays, through sermons and seasons, through the long pastorate of the Rev. B.T.

Jones, a tenure that ran from 1942 all the way to 1974. It was during those years that the congregation raised something lasting: a brick edifice, constructed in 1960. Brick, where once there had been only brush.

And on the back of the marker, the names are carved in stone: the families who built this place and held it together. Beavers, Bell, Cofield, Ellis, Jackson, Jones, Killion, Mack, Martin, Newsome, Pearson, Robinson, Smith, Wattley; names that deserve to be spoken out loud, not just read in passing. With Rev.

Erie D. Fields serving as pastor at the time the marker was placed in 1980, Saint Mark Baptist Church stood as proof that what two preachers started in someone's living room in 1879 had grown into something you could build a steeple on.

What the marker says

The congregation was organized in 1879 by two preachers, the Rev. Dick White and a Rev. Jones, who conducted prayer meetings in area homes. The first church services were held on the farm of Isaac Graves, northeast of McKinney. Originally known as the Free Missionary Baptist Church, the name became Saint Mark in 1886. That same year the church purchased this property and built a brush arbor. A one-room frame building served as the first sanctuary. The present brick edifice was constructed in 1960 during the 1942-1974 pastorate of the Rev. B.T. Jones. (1980) Incise on back: Church Families A. Beavers S. Bell Jr. R.GV. Cofield O.H. Ellis E. Jackson J. Jackson R. Jones E. Killion J. Mack B. Martin L. Newsome A.L. Pearson Geo. Pearson E.T. Robinson E. Smith L. Wattley W.J. Wattley Rev. Erie D. Fields, Pastor