After the Civil War, the Cromwell family moved to Elkhart in Anderson County, where J.W. Cromwell found no organized Baptist church and decided to create one. In April 1886, Cromwell and six other charter members founded the Baptist Church of Elkhart and called Reverend Julius Burk as its first pastor. A church home had been established in 1876 on the Quarles Plantation for school and church purposes under the name Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1897, land was sold to the Missionary Baptist Church and a wooden structure was built. After that building burned in 1943, with all church records lost, the congregation moved to the old Mercantile Building, which also burned in 1963. After briefly meeting in the Elkhart High School auditorium, the congregation bought land from the Funderburk family and built a new church building, dedicated on June 21, 1964. Thirty-four pastors have served the congregation, one of the oldest established inside the city. From 1886 to 1890 it belonged to the Neches River Association, and from 1891 to the present it has been part of the Anderson County Baptist Association, later renamed the Saline Baptist Association. Its history has included summer revivals, weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas services, Vacation Bible Schools, and an annual Christmas food drive, and for more than a century it has been a beacon of light in the community.