The Oak Shade fellowship grew from an 1857 meeting in a log schoolhouse half a mile south, conducted by Union Baptist Association missionaries David Fisher and B.L. Wright, which revealed the need for a church in the area. After a canvass of the surrounding community, the Oak Shade Congregation was organized on July 4, 1857, and the Rev. Austin Ellis, a native of Virginia born in 1791, became its first pastor. Before 1860 the church was moved to this site on part of the Daniel Donahoe Survey. Membership began to decline in 1870 after the nearby rural Shade Baptist Church was started three miles south. In 1881 the congregation was reorganized and built a one-room sanctuary here, and a separate building was later added on the property as a community schoolhouse. Worship services continued here in other structures until a brick sanctuary was completed in 1951. Graves in the Oak Shade Cemetery include Andrew Jackson Isaacks, a veteran of the Texas Revolution who served as the first postmaster for Tarkington Prairie, and several victims of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.