George Washington Baines was a noted Texas religious leader who served as pastor to General and Mrs. Sam Houston in 1850 and founded the first Baptist paper in Texas in 1855. During the difficult Civil War years, he served as president of Baylor University from 1861 to 1863 and as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fairfield from 1864 to 1866. A native of North Carolina, he was uneducated as a young man and at age 21 cut and rafted timber to pay for schooling, later receiving an A.M. degree from the University of Alabama. He moved to Arkansas, founded seven churches, and served in the Arkansas Legislature from 1843 to 1844, then lived and preached in Louisiana from 1845 to 1849. He had ten children. His wife, Melissa Ann Butler Baines, died here during the war, and he made her coffin with his own hands. One of their great-grandsons, Lyndon Baines Johnson, became the thirty-sixth President of the United States, the first Texan to receive that honor. In Confederate Texas, churches were vital to military and civilian morale, and Baines and other ministers led prayer days, soldier relief work, aid to families, distribution of Bibles, and inspired numerous conversions. Later he served as agent for the Baptist State Convention and its education commission.