The following history, 1853-1953, is taken from Dr. W. H. Vann’s One Hundred Years, a booklet published by First Baptist Church for its centennial celebration. In the Foreword, then-Pastor James Basden says, “As you read this story let it be remembered that it was written not to point with pride but to magnify the Lord who has done such great things for us.” In that spirit, we offer this brief account, with additional material (mostly from an unsigned paper, “First Baptist Church History”) for the years since 1953.
In 1853 a group of eight people met in Belton in a small frame building on what is now Pearl Street, near the jail, for the purpose of organizing a Baptist church. The account given by one of the charter members, Captain R. T. Taylor, of Jackson County, is as follows: “The First Missionary Baptist Church organized in the town of Belton was in the latter part of the summer of 1853, by the Reverends S. G. O’Bryan of Waco and David Fisher of Gay Hill, Washington County, with the following members: Dr. W. D. Eastland, Mrs. Ermine Holbert and her two sisters the Misses Sally and Jonaphine Wilson; James Clark and his wife, known as ‘Uncle Jimmie’; and R. T. Taylor and Olivia J., his wife.”
Less than ten years before, Texas had been admitted as a state; and only three years before, Nolan Springs, later known officially as Nolanville and then as Belton, had been decided upon as the county seat of Bell County.
This church continued in existence a little over two years. It had no regular pastor, but was supplied occasionally by Rev. S. G. O’Bryan and Rev. John Claybaugh, a missionary. In addition to the preaching of these two, services were frequently conducted by Judge R. E. B. Baylor. While holding court in Belton, it was his custom to preach on Sunday, and at nights also during the week; and he often preached when passing through on his way from Waco to Austin.
During the war there was no preaching except an occasional sermon from some visiting brother, until the summer of 1864. At this time Elder W. W. Harris, with the assistance of another minister, held a meeting at the court house which resulted in a large number of conversions and about thirty additions to the church. Brother Harris was called as pastor and accepted, but he was interested primarily in evangelistic work and never served as pastor.
The history of the church for the next twenty years, and indeed the history of the town and of all Bell County, is intimately bound up with the lives of two great men, who not inappropriately were both named after presidents of our country – George Washington Baines and Martin Van Buren Smith.
