(Photo courtesy of Jim Sides)

Rocky Springs Missionary Baptist Church Historical Marker

Marker Text: 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. (1969)

Copyright 2006  to present Kaye Slover