White Oak Baptist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. White Oak Baptist Church, Gregg County, and a story that starts before the story officially starts. See, by the time White Oak Baptist Church was formally organized in 1910, there had already been a congregation gathering in that sawmill town since 1889.

Twenty-one years of Sunday mornings before anybody called it official. Pastor Robert Marsh was the man leading the flock when 1910 finally made it formal. Then, three years on, two names arrived that would echo through White Oak life for much of the twentieth century.

M. C. and Ada Satterwhite, Ada having been born a Dickinson, joined the church in 1913, and they were not the kind of people who just warmed a pew and went home. They were instrumental, the marker says, instrumental in White Oak life.

And here is where the story gets its weight. In 1935, the Satterwhites donated two acres of land for a church building. Two acres, given over.

That is the kind of thing a community remembers. The mid-1930s also brought the men's brotherhood into being, and then 1940 saw the ladies' auxiliary take shape. The church kept growin as the need arose, facilities following the people, the people following something bigger than themselves.

White Oak Baptist Church remains active today, still reaching into the community, still in fellowship. That sawmill town congregation from 1889 grew into something that outlasted the sawdust.

What the marker says

Formally organized in 1910, White Oak Baptist Church traces its history to an earlier congregation founded in the sawmill town in 1889. Pastor Robert Marsh led the congregation in 1910. Three years later, M. C. and Ada (Dickinson) Satterwhite joined the church. Instrumental in White Oak Life for much of the 20th century, the Satterwhites donated two acres of land for a church building in 1935. The men's brotherhood was formed in the mid-1930s; the ladies' auxiliary began in 1940. Church facilities grew as needed. White Oak Baptist Church remains active in fellowship and community outreach programs. (1998)