Mount Gilead History

The war with Mexico was over and most of the soldiers had returned home.  Many, having seen parts of the world outside of their own home for the first time, decided to migrate west.  Some headed for California where reports said there were ample fruitful land, a good climate, and gold.

Others decided to come to Texas, a land they had seen during the war that seemed green and lush.  Texas had been a state in the union for only five years and still fit the description of Wilderness and Frontier.

Shortly after Texas independence was assured at San Jacinto, settlers began to stream into the northern and northeastern parts of the state, which were the most accessible and seemed to be the safest.  And the settlers had come to a remote and rugged place.  The nearest railroad in 1850 had its western terminus in Monroe, Louisiana.  A rail line connected Galveston and Houston and had been started toward Austin, but work halted when it was lass than twenty-five miles out of Houston.  The most accessible means of transportation to the outside world was by wagon up the National Highway (a road established and built under the Republic of Texas), which linked Dallas with the navigable head of the Red River.  From there, a steamboat ran down to Shreveport and on to New Orleans.

And there were Indians—Native Americans—who did not look with much favor on the efforts of the latter-day Americans to settle the area.  At least three different tribes circulated in the area, alternately fighting each other and the settlers.  These were the Caddos, the Tonkawas and the Wacos.  Probably the Cheyenne, Apache and some others were known to frequently pass through the area.  [The Comanche were also in significant numbers and eventually posed the greatest threat.]  The United States Army, given the task of protecting the frontier settlers from these attacks, built Camp Worth at the ford on the Trinity River in 1849.  The only other settlement in what was later Tarrant County was Grapevine Springs [in Coppell].  Sam Houston had negotiated a peace treaty here in 1835, a stroke of genius which kept the Indians from attacking settlers while they were fighting for their independence from Mexico.  [He later negotiated another treaty among various tribes in 1841, hoping to secure the safety of the region for permanent settlers to come.  The Comanches, however, refused to come.]

An enterprising man named Peters secured a land grant in the area, then sold parts of it to would-be settlers who came to Texas to be part of the Peters Colony.  This was in 1844 or 1845 before Texas entered the Union.  All of the founding members of Mount Gilead church apparently came to Texas to be part of the Colony.

[In 1846, near what would become Grapevine], a small Baptist house of worship, Lonesome Dove Church, was formed.  It is described as being originally located within a quarter mile of Grapevine, although it is now in Southlake.  All of this area, all of Tarrant County, and beyond, was then part of Fannin County, with the county seat at Bonham, in far northeast Texas.  As more settlers moved in it became obvious that a new county—in fact several new counties—were needed to bring local government closer to the population.  Accordingly, Tarrant County—along with Denton County and some others—was created by the Texas legislature on December 20, 1849 and organized the following August 5, with Birdville as the original county seat.

Travel—even for short distances—was difficult at best in those days and many of the Baptists in the area who were nominally members of the Lonesome Dove Church, found it difficult or impossible to regularly attend services.  So, Reverend John Allen Freeman, a member of the Lonesome Dove Church, established three other meeting places—missions we would call them today—and held monthly services at each.  Reverend Freeman described these sites as being “one on Bear Creek, one in the neighborhood of Brother Barecroft, and north in the settlement where James and J.H. Halford lived.”  Those who made decisions for Christ at these were accepted into the Lonesome Dove Church.  As the need for churches closer to the farms where people lived, a number of the members of Lonesome Dove church were given their release from membership and instructed to form a new church “on the hed of Bar Creek.”  This event happened on the third Saturday in June, 1850 and the following month on July 13, 1850, Mount Gilead Baptist Church was organized at the home of Daniel Barcroft.  (In subsequent years the name, Barcroft or Barecroft, was misspelled as Bancroft and the street by the side of the present church is still Bancroft Road.

Reverend Freeman, Reverend David Myers and Jehu V. Fyke were the organizing members and there were ten others who were members of the church from its founding.  These were Reverend Myer’s wife, Lutetia, Reverend Freeman’s wife, Nancy, Daniel and Mary Ann Barcroft, Iraneous and Lucinda Neace, Permelia Allen, Abby (or Abbie) Dunham and two slaves, Ambrose and Carolyn Collard, who had been inherited by Permalia Allen when her husband died before she came to Texas.  Although many records list only eight charter members, omitting the Myers family, Nancy Freeman, Mary Ann Barcroft and Fyke, all of these were associated with the church since its inception.

Reverend Freeman was born in 1821 in South Carolina and later lived in Tennessee and Missouri, where the Hopewell Baptist Church of Harrisonville licensed him to preach in 1843, Missouri.  He was ordained a minister in July 1846, at Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, of which he and his wife, Nancy Freeman, also were charter members.  He lived until 1919 and died in Los Angeles, California.

Reverend Myers was born in Kentucky in 1797 and was ordained a minister in Illinois before coming to Texas in 1845 with his wife, Lutetia and their fourteen children.  He helped organize the Union Baptist Church, the first Baptist Church in Dallas County, and in 1849, helped to form the Elm Fork Baptist Association.  Apparently, he did not stay long at Mount Gilead as records show that he pastored at other churches in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  He died in 1843 in Dallas County.

Jehu Fyke was a member of the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church before coming to Mount Gilead.  He later lived in Gainesville and other towns in north Texas.  It is not known when or where he died.

Daniel Barcroft was born in Tennessee in 1812 and became a Christian in 1831.  He married Mary Ann Allen sometime before 1840 and they came with her family to Texas in 1847.  He was a deacon at the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church before helping to found Mount Gilead.  He was elected Tarrant County Commissioner when the county was in 1850 and later served in the Confederate army.  After the Civil War, he returned to Mount Gilead and died in the area in 1881.  He is believed to be buried in the Mount Gilead Cemetery, but his exact gravesite is unknown.  His wife, who died several years before he did, is buried at Mount Gilead.

Abby V. Allen Dunham was born in 1808 in North Carolina and came to Texas with her mother in 1847.  She was a widow with several children.  Nothing is known of her later life.

Iraneous Neace was born in 1816 in Tennessee and married Lucinda Allen, also of Tennessee, in 1836 while both were living in Missouri.  He came to Texas with his family in 1847 and patented (claimed) the section of land just east of Mount Gilead and the cemetery.  The survey of this area still bears his name.  In the mid 1850’s he moved to a plot about six miles west of the Mount Gilead church, but continued to attend services here.  He served in the Confederate Army and returned to the area after the war.  He died in 1879 and his wife in 1874 and both are buried in Mount Gilead cemetery.

Permelia “Milly” Allen was born about 1772 in North Carolina and as a child, witnessed actions in the American Revolution.  She married Thomas Allen in North Carolina and the couple later lived in Tennessee and Missouri.  Her husband died in Missouri in 1845 or 1846 and she came to Texas in 1847 with a group of friends and relatives.  She joined the Lonesome Dove Church in October 1848.

Milly Allen was the mother of Lucinda Neace, Mary Ann Barcroft and Abby Dunham.  She died in 1866 and is buried in the Mount Gilead Cemetery.

Ambrose and Carolyn Collard were slaves inherited by Milly Allen on the death of her husband in Missouri.  They apparently stayed with her after they were emancipated at the end of the Civil War, at least until her death in 1866.  After that, records are scant, although Carolyn Collard is believed to have died in Cook County sometime before 1898.

The new church needed a home and for the first few months, none was available.  Members met for services at the homes of members, mostly at the farm of Daniel Barcroft.  In 1850 or early 1851, the church began to hold services in a small log cabin near Barcroft’s home.  There is discrepancy about when and for what purpose this building was built.  Some indicated that it had been built in 1849 as a school building.  Others say it was built in 1851 by the church members as their meeting place and later used as a school.  In either case, it was extremely primitive, having puncheon (split log) flooring and log slab seats.  It was located about where the present Youth Building is situated and was large enough to accommodate the church’s rapid growth in the first few years.  From the original group of founders, Mount Gilead grew rapidly under the leadership of Reverend Freeman and Daniel Barcroft, who was the earliest known deacon.  A few months after its founding, Mount Gilead church was accepted as a member church of the Elm Fork Association of United Baptists.  The Elm Fork name indicates that most of the member churches of the Association lay north and east of Mount Gilead, as this is the area drained by the Elm Fork of the Trinity River.  The United Baptists were and are a distinct branch of Baptists and they never joined the then five-year-old Southern Baptist Convention.

Mount Gilead was active in the Elm Fork Association, and in October 1853, was host to the annual meeting of the group.

There was some dissention in the following years because the Elm Fork group also accepted as members those who were from other denominations.  Whether because of this, or more likely because of westward movement of the population, four churches—Mount Gilead, Lonesome Dove, Bear Creek and Birdville—asked for and received letters of dismissal from the Elm Fork Association.  In September 1855, they and other churches formed the West Fork Association of United Baptists.  The preliminary organizational meeting of the Association was held at Mount Gilead church a few weeks later, and the Association was formally organized at Birdville in October 1855.  A total of twelve churches were listed as charter members of the new group.  Mount Gilead, which by this time boasted eighty-six members, was one of the larger member churches.

A Mount Gilead member, identified only as H. Grandbury, was named to the constitutional committee of the new group, was elected treasurer of the Association and was a member of the Domestic Missions Board.  In 1856, Reverend Freeman was elected moderator of the Association.

Among Reverend Freeman’s activities was a ministry among the soldiers at Camp Worth, later Fort Worth, and he preached the first sermon ever delivered in Fort Worth.

By 1857, Mount Gilead had grown to seventy-five members.  In April of that year, Reverend Freeman resigned as pastor of the church and with several other families, left for California on an ox-powered wagon.  He apparently did not return to the area until fifty years later when he preached his last sermon in 1907 at the sixtieth anniversary services of the Lonesome Dove Church.

Reverend Freeman was succeeded by Reverend J.T. Willis, about whom little is known, and he was succeeded in 1858 by Reverend Mug, who also is largely unknown.  He is not mentioned in any other records and apparently was pastor for only a few months.  Reverend Mug was succeeded in 1858 by Reverend A. Dobkins, who was pastor during the great tragedy of 1859.

In 1859, an Indian raiding party burned the original church building to the ground—or did they?   Indians were certainly active in the area in the 1850’s.  In fact, the last Indian raid recorded was in the mid-1870’s.  Thomas Neace, a nephew of Iraneous Neace, who came to the area in 1847, later wrote about Tonkawa Indians coming up upon the playground while he was at school (presumably at the mount Gilead Church site).  His sister, Muhulda Neace Hill, later wrote that on moonlit nights she could watch the Indian raiding parties from the window of her home.  If the barn was not kept locked, they would take the livestock.  In fact, her father sometimes chained and padlocked his horse to a tree to keep it from being stolen.

There is a long established tradition in the church that the original building was burned by the Indians in 1859—but nobody who was there in 1859 is known to have written about the event.  Thomas Neace, who wrote extensively of his life in the area at the time, never mentioned it, although he told many stories about Indian raids and visits.  His cousin, Thomas R. Allen, who also lived in the area, and wrote about Indian actions there, also omitted any mention of the burning of the church.

There are authoritative accounts written later about the burning of the original building and it is certain that there was a great deal of raiding and other hostile activity by the Indians at the time.  Also, it is probable that the original building was reported to have been built on that same site in that same year. 

The Indian raid and church burning have given to Mount Gilead a much storied past.  But there appears to be no way to prove that the Indians did it.  Still, the fear of Indian raids persisted and the tales of members carrying guns to church is probably true.  However there is no indication of further Indian action against the church itself.

Reverend Dopkins resigned in 1860 and the Mount Gilead Church entered into a period of decline.  A new church building is reported in some accounts to have been built in 1862 and to have been the first in the area to have glass windows.  Other accounts however, indicate that no new building was built until after the Civil War.  The outbreak of the war in early 1861 began a period in which church membership dropped sharply.  All early records were destroyed in a fire in the 1870’s, but it appears that actual membership dropped below twenty and services were held only intermittently in the latter years of the war.  The new meeting house of 1862, if it ever existed, had either been pulled down or had fallen into disrepair, because church members wrote of not being able to get a pastor to come without having a place of worship.  The church was apparently without a pastor from 1861 to 1866.

However, all was not despair.  Daniel Barcroft returned from the war, apparently before hostilities actually ended and was unwilling to see the Mount Gilead church die.  Under his leadership, a new church building was planned and membership in the church began again to increase.  In 1865, Mount Gilead reported more than twenty baptisms, the largest number reported to the West Fork Association by any church in membership.

Reverend A.J. Halford was called as pastor in 1866, the first of his four tenures as pastor, lasting until 1888.  His first tenure as pastor however lasted only until 1867.  He was succeeded by Reverend W.W. Mitchell, a Baptist minister from Missouri who apparently had been forced to leave that state after preaching against the actions for the Union Army in the area.  Mitchell resigned a year later in 1868, because of “the lack of a sufficient house.”  Mitchell’s departure apparently was the spark needed to ignite the church into action.  In May 1868, Eli A. Hall deeded one acre of the Daniel Barcroft survey to Daniel Barcroft and Iraneous Neace, as “Trustees of the Baptist Church at Mount Gilead.”  This land compromises about the northern one quarter of the present church land.  Work began on a new building and by September of that year it was completed and able to host the thirteenth annual meeting of the West Fork Association.  The building stood approximately where the red brick Youth Building stands today.  This is also the approximate site of the 1849/50 log building.

After Mitchell resigned, Reverend Halford was called back for the second of his four tenures, with this one lasting until 1870.  He was succeeded in 1871 by Reverend Jack D. Doyle, who was mentioned only in a report to the West Fork Association records.  There are few mentions of pastors in the period because all, or most, of the church’s early records were destroyed in two fires.  One, which destroyed the home of Eli A. Hill, the man who gave the original acre for the church, destroyed all of the early church records, and another, which destroyed the Tarrant County Court House, caused most or all of the original land records to be lost.

Doyle resigned as pastor at the end of 1874 and was succeeded by Reverend J.O. Burnett, who remained through 1878.  Again, there are no records remaining of his tenure.  But the Mount Gilead church is recorded to have grown to 200 members by the end of that year.  Burnett was followed by Reverend Halford who returned for his third tenure as pastor, this time for two years, 1879 and 1880.

About this time, strife and discord entered Mount Gilead church.  There are no records of what caused this discord, but some members left the church to attend elsewhere and the remaining members decided to relocate the church to a site at the present-day intersection of Elaine Drive and Bear Creek Drive along Big Bear Creek in Keller.  The church members also sold the 1867 building, although not, apparently, the land on which it was located.  The building was sold to a John Ladd, who is recorded to have moved the building away—to what use or fate is not now known.

At the new site, the church constructed a building, which was used as a school during the week and church on weekends.  The public school system in Texas was not established until the late 1880’s and until then, all or most schools were private ventures supported by churches or private associations.  Just what sort of school met in the new building is not known, but in all probability, it was one in which all classes met together with one or two teachers. 

Within two years of leaving the original site, however, the membership—or most of it—agreed to return to the original site and build a new building.  This included at least some of those who left the church during the “discord” and most of the church after its relocation.  These two years, 1880 to 1882, were the only times since its founding in 1850 that Mount Gilead Baptist church met anywhere other than the present church site, except for the first few months when it met in various members’ homes.

The new 1882 church building again was on the site of the 1849/50, 1862 (if it actually existed), and 1858 buildings, but it was larger than any of them.  It originally was a frame building and was apparently remodeled, added to or changed several times.  This building is today renovated, remodeled, and added to, the present Youth Building.  For more than eighty years it was the sole structure housing Mount Gilead church.  The original frame building had its walls bricked over in the 1950’s.

There were about twenty members of Mount Gilead Church for whom the return to the present site was not acceptable.  They lived closer to the Bear Creek site and wanted a church in that area.  The railroad had come through the area in 1881 and passed close to the Bear Creek site and it seemed to promise growth to the area.  So these members asked for and were given letters of dismissal, which allowed them to form a new Baptist church in the area.  This was the origin of Keller Baptist Church, now known as First Baptist Church of Keller.  Both at this time and later, members of Mount Gilead moved on and formed churches in Henrietta Creek and Roanoke in Texas, and at Martha in Oklahoma.  All of these churches came directly from the Mount Gilead church, just as it had come from the Lonesome Dove Church.

Halford was succeeded as pastor by Reverend A.T. Thompson and it was under his leadership that the new church building was constructed in 1882.  Thompson left at the end of 1882 and was succeeded by Reverend Halford, who returned for his fourth tenure as pastor at Mount Gilead Church.  He remained pastor from 1883 to 1888, making a total of eight years as pastor over a twenty-two year period.  During his last pastorate period, the old West Fork Baptist Association was disbanded and replaced by several smaller regional associations.  One of these was the present Tarrant Baptist Association, of which Mount Gilead was and is a charter member.  Sometime during this period, Mount Gilead became affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, although there appear to be no records of the exact date.

Keeping pastors proved a continuing problem for the church.  After Rev. A.J. Halford left in 1888, Mount Gilead was served by Rev. R.K. Grimes in 1890 (apparently there was no pastor in 1889, none at least is listed on any record).  Although Grimes was pastor for only about a year, he remained in the area and is buried in the Mount Gilead Cemetery.  Some of his descendants still live in Tarrant County.  William Simms was pastor from 1891 through 1893 and was followed by Rev. S.F. Murphy from 1894 through 1896 and Rev. W.H. Woods in 1897.  At this time, all of the church’s pastors, from John Allen Freeman on, had been unsalaried.  They had subsisted on gifts or donations from individual members – often in the form of fruit, vegetables, fowl, game or other agricultural product, used clothing and free accommodations at the homes of various members – plus what they might earn at sideline jobs.

When Rev. O.F. Gregg became pastor in 1898, it was apparent to the membership that they would continue to have each pastor only for a short time as long as they were not salaried.  So in 1899, the church budget, for the first time, included a $200 annual salary for the pastor.  This was a considerable sum of money for the time.  Many people scraped by on less and even well-off people seldom earned more than a few thousand dollars in a year.

Even so, pastors came and went with distressing frequency.  Gregg remained through 1901 and was succeeded by a Brother Conway in 1902.  Nothing appears about him in the church records and he was succeeded in 1903 by Rev. W.B. Baldwin under whose leadership Mount Gilead changed considerably.

Women appeared for the first time in the church’s leadership and the first Training Union was established.  In 1906, Mrs. Ellen Elston became the first woman to be church clerk and the next year, she was the first woman to serve as a messenger (delegate) to the Tarrant Baptist Association’s annual meeting.  In 1908, Mrs. Elston was named acting director of the church’s first Training Union and within a year, the Training Union had forty-six members.

When Rev. J.R. Touchstone was called to succeed Baldwin after he resigned in late 1908, the church appeared to be in good health and active.  However, hard times were just ahead.  Touchstone himself was an active pastor and took part in the Tarrant Association activities as well.  He had pastored churches in Kennedale and Mansfield, in southern Tarrant County, before coming to Mount Gilead. 

Also before coming to Mount Gilead, he served on the Missionary Board of the Tarrant Association and from 1907 to 1910, he was Corresponding Secretary of Missions for the Association.  When he resigned as pastor in 1911, the church had ninety-four members.  This was not the greatest membership Mount Gilead had had up to that time, but it was among the highest it was to have for many years.

After Touchstone left in 1911, the church had no pastor for three years, until Rev. W.W. Simms was called in 1914.  He served for only a year and was succeeded by Rev. A.J. Goodfellow, who also stayed for only a year.

After he left in 1916, there was no pastor for some thirteen years.  No one today knows what happened in 1911 to turn what had been a thriving church into only a ghost of a church.  Perhaps only the records are lost, but this does not answer the entire question.  After 1911, Mount Gilead made no contributions and no reports to the Tarrant Baptist Association, something that it had never missed doing before.  After Goodfellow left in 1916, it is alleged that the church went out of existence and only the old building was left, unattended.

But this is also not possible.  We have photos of events at the church during and after World War I, but have no way of knowing what was going on.  Informal meetings?  Homecoming?  Work days?  We shall probably never know.  However, there are fragmentary records which indicate that some activity connected with worship at Mount Gilead continued at least through 1928 and that some work was done on the building during this period.  For part of this time the building was used as a school.  From 1928 to 1930 – two years – there is absolutely no record of any activity at the church or by any of its members or former members.

However, on Easter Sunday, 1930, the church grounds were the site of an Easter egg hunt and some of the former member decided to re-organize the church’s Sunday School for the benefit of the children, if no one else.  Exactly how far this effort went is uncertain, but in 1931, the condition of the church and possibly the effort to reorganize the Sunday School came to the attention of Reverend E.D. Reece.  He was employed by the Tarrant Baptist Association as a “county missionary” and charged with helping churches which were “making little progress.”

Reece found an old roster of members of Mount Gilead, contacted as many as he could and invited them to a meeting to consider re-organizing the church.  About 24 old-timers attended and these once and future members responded by renovating and repainting the old building and began again holding services there.  Reverend Ira Bentley was called as pastor and served through 1932.  Reverend S.R. Garrison was called to succeed Bentley in 1933 and in 1934, a two-week long revival was held to celebrate the restoration of Mount Gilead Baptist Church to active service to the Lord.  Membership climbed from the twenty-four at the restoration in 1932 to sixty-four in 1934 and seventy-five in 1935.

A succession of pastors followed, most serving for only one or two years, but the church grew steadily, despite the difficult financial times during the Great Depression.  Reverend L.A. Moon followed Garrison and served through 1935.  In 1936, when the membership had reached eighty, Reverend Paul Clifton was called.  Under his leadership, the Training Union was reorganized before he resigned at the end of 1937.  He was succeeded by Reverend L.E. Miller in 1938 and Reverend O.J. Cox, who served from 1939 through 1941.

During Cox’s tenure, Mount Gilead Baptist Church faced the third major war to come during the Church’s existence.  There were nearly 100 names on the church’s membership roll when the Second World War began.  Many moved away to take jobs in defense factories and many were called into the service.  Reverend K.B. Echols was called to the church in 1942, but when he left, no pastor could be located and the church remained pastorless for about a year.  Reverend B.R. Rhodes was called in 1944 and served until the end of the war in 1945.

Postwar growth of the church began in 1945 when Reverend W.A. Lawson was called and he remained at Mount Gilead through 1949.  Church membership grew to 137 by 1946 and continued to increase.  Reverend Yandall Woodfin became pastor in 1950 – the year that Mount Gilead Baptist Church celebrated its centennial – and the old church building was again renovated.  Dual front doors were replaced by the single door and vestibule still there.  A new roof was added and the walls covered with asbestos siding.

In 1951, Reverend Tom Lawler, a student at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was called to be pastor of Mount Gilead.  He was involved in radio ministry and through it, he preached to many thousands.  Church membership at this time, 1951, reached 185, continuing the strong growth that began immediately after the war.  It was during period that the church was first air-conditioned and the old hewn log pews, dating back probably to the 1860’s, replaced with more comfortable seating.

During this time a move was made to designate the 1882 building as a state historical site, along with Mount Gilead Cemetery across the road.  The cemetery had been allowed to fall into disrepair and neglect, partly because no one was sure who held title to it.  After much research by the Mount Gilead Cemetery Association and the Tarrant County Historical Commission, an old deed was discovered with vested title to the cemetery in “the deacons of Mount Gilead Baptist Church.”  Under church sponsorship, the cemetery was cleaned up and repairs to some graves were made.  Some of the oldest graves are of stone construction and are partly above the ground.  In 1982, both the cemetery and the 1882 building were designated as historical sites and marked with plaques to attest to this designation.

About this time, (1951) it became evident that the old church simply could no longer accommodate all the needs of the growing church.  An educational building was planned and built in 1953, when membership had reached 199.  This building still exists, but has been incorporated into the present church structure.  It now forms the rearmost portion of the educational classroom section, beginning where there are two steps up in the first floor hallway.

The educational building was constructed under the leadership of Reverend Edward L. Vinson, who had been called to be pastor in 1952.  He remained pastor until 1959, one of the longer tenures of any minister in the church’s history.  During this period, the walls of the old church were bricked over, giving it its present appearance.  During that same restoration in 1957, the church also got its first baptistery and indoor restrooms.  In earlier times, new members were baptized in a pond now on land at the nearby home of the Buchanan family.

In 1959, a recreational building – now the fellowship hall – was moved to its present site behind the church, although the present sanctuary was not there at the time.

Also in 1959, Vinson resigned and Reverend W.E. Cliatt was called to be pastor.  He served only for a year, but at the end of his tenure, membership in the church had grown to 240.  His successor, Reverend Jarrell Pritchett, was called in 1961 and served through 1963, at which time church membership had climbed to 285.  During the pastorate of Reverend Pritchett, the church for the first time added a second minister, with Rollin Delap being called as minister of music and education.

Reverend Bill Wideman was called to be pastor in 1963 and served until 1965.  Before he left, work was begun on the church parsonage, but it was not completed until 1968.  Reverend James Crawford was called as pastor in 1965 and he served until 1967.  Reverend Wesley Hilburn served as pastor during part of 1968 and Reverend H.C. Downs was called in 1968 and served through 1971.  Strange as it may seem today, Reverend Downs was Mount Gilead’s first full-time pastor.  All of his predecessors had been part-time or bivocational, as it was termed, meaning that the church could not completely support them.  Reverend Downs was given a salary of $6,000 per year.

It was during this period that Mount Gilead began to take on the look that it has today.  It was decided in 1969 to build a new sanctuary, south of the 1882 building and it was completed a year later, in 1970.  The church then had four buildings, all separate from each other.

The land on which these building were and are situated consists of the original acre donated by Eli Hill in 1868 and two additional acres.  The source of these two acres is lost.  Original records were destroyed when the Tarrant County Courthouse burned in 1876.  But on June 8, 1910, Vol and S.A. Allen, who lived in Collingsworth County, executed a deed for two acres to N.L. Joyce and James Elston as “Deacons of Mount Gilead Baptist Church and their Successors in Office.”  The deed was said to replace an earlier deed which was lost, misplaced or destroyed and which had not been put into the Tarrant County records.  The title to Hill’s original acre also was lost in the 1876 fire, but was re-recorded in county records in 1878.

During Reverend Downs’ time as pastor, membership in the church nearly doubled.  Downs resigned in 1971 and was succeeded by Reverend Larry T. Bailes III.  He led the church for four years, until 1976.  Reverend Stanley Brown served as interim pastor until Reverend John Whitton Jr. was called to be pastor.  He remained until 1979, when he was succeeded by Reverend Franklin E. (Eddie) Atkinson.

 Sources:  David Brown

1996

Mt. Gilead History, author unknown