Mt. Zion, Oak Grove

Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church

• Other names: Oak Grove
• Type: Missionary Baptist
• Language and/or ethnicity: Predominantly Anglo-American
• When organized: Unknown, at least by 1926
• Charter members: Unknown
• First pastor: Unknown
• Other pastors: Brother Melton, J. D. Pate, Walter H. Ingram, Brother Eason,  Alvin Pate, Calvin L. Honea, Cullen R. Keating, Vada S. Lyles, Jack Lucas, Stafford S. Harris, Herman Bryan, J. F. Tompkins
• Zone: Southeast Rusk County
• Location: County Road 3280, Oak Grove Community. Approx: 31.893896, -94.503048
• Affiliation: Shelby County Association, Missionary Baptist Association of Texas, American Baptist Association
• When disbanded: After 1966

The Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church met in the Oak Grove Community south of Caledonia, Rusk County. The building was a short way down what is now County Road 3280. The building was on the left (west) near or before the 90-degree curve.[i] What’s left of the abandoned cemetery is across the road. J. F. Tompkins is listed as pastor in 1968 Missionary Baptist Association of Texas minutes; by 1972 the church was no longer listed in the MBAT Year Book. (This was probably a case of simply leaving a disbanded church in for several years before removing it.) Mt. Zion was not represented in the Shelby County Association 1967, but last represented in 1966. This church was in the Shelby County Missionary Baptist Association from 1926 to 1966, according to J. W. Griffith’s Century One history, pp. 72-73. When the church disbanded, “the majority of members moved to New Columbia.”[ii]

Known cemetery burials/markers are HERE.

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[i] I originally thought I was told that the church building was on the right, across the road from the cemetery. However, on a 1955 General Highway Map of Rusk County, Texas, the church house symbol is shown on the left, on the cemetery side. This has been confirmed by people what have attended there in the past, including Betty Hancock and Jeff Elliott.
[ii] Griffith, James Wyatt. Century One: Shelby County Missionary Baptist Association, 1881-1980; a Brief History, Henderson, TX: Criterion Press, 1980, page 72.