First Baptist Church of Bastrop, Texas
Baptists in Early Central Texas
1834-1850
Central Texas had an important role to play in the early history of Texas Baptists,
as well as in the political history of the state; and Bastrop County, which originally included all
or parts of nineteen Texas Counties, was the scene of some of the first Baptist ministry in the
state.
Mexican law decreed that all prospective settlers must be Catholic in order to receive
grants of land in Texas; but in 1834, the Mexican government softened this requirement by passing a
law which stated that no person should be molested because of his political or religious beliefs,
provided that he did not disturb the peace. This helped in opening the door to missionary work in
the state.
Also, although Protestants had been forbidden by law to organize churches in Texas,
there was no law forbidding the immigration of a church body that had been organized before coming to
Texas. The Reverend Abner Smith brought a small church body to Texas from the United States, and with
the help of one of its members, and the Reverend Isaac Crouch, recognized and ordained the first
permanent Baptist church of any kind actually established in Texas. This event took place on March 28,
1834, about twelve miles below the town of Bastrop, on the Colorado River. The new church, known as
the Providence Church, consisted of the two ministers and five other members: James Burleson, Joseph
Burleson, Elizabeth Burleson, Moses Gage, and Isabella Crouch. They later erected a small building
near the mouth of Alum Creek. It was there that Moses Gage was "liberated to preach" in 1837, thus
becoming the first man licensed by Baptists to preach in Texas.
The Providence Church was anti-missionary, but the first sermon of which there is any
record was preached by a strong missionary preacher, Zacharias N. Morrell, who came to Texas from
Tennessee in 1835. He was not the first Baptist preacher in Texas, but one historian called him the
state's most important pioneer Baptist preacher. In 1837, it was the Reverend Morrell who established
the first regular missionary church in Texas at Washington-On-The-Brazos. In 1839, he established the
third missionary church in Texas, the Plum Grove Church in Bastrop County and became its pastor.
In 1840, he presided over the second annual session of the Union or United Baptist Association, the
first Baptist association in Texas , and which has continued and thrived until the present day.
Judge Robert Bledsoe Baylor, for whom the university was named , came from Alabama
and settled in La Grange. Judge Baylor held court by day and preached by night over an extensive
area that included Bastrop. He was presiding over a session of the District Court in Bastrop on that
historic day when news came that Texas had been admitted into the Union of the United States of America
as its twenty-eight state. Judge Baylor adjourned the court until ten o'clock the next morning to
allow those present to join in with the rest of the town in celebrating the event. After the
annexation of Texas and the ending of the war with Mexico, there began an influx of ordained ministers
into Texas from the states. Among them were P.B. Chandler of Georgia and R.O. Taliaferro of Kentucky,
both of whom several years later would serve as pastors in Bastrop.
It was at this time, with churches in several neighboring communities leading the way,
that the First Baptist Church in Bastrop was founded.
