Desdemona First Baptist Church began in 1872 with nine charter members after the Rev. Johnnie Northcutt organized summer brush arbor meetings under Spanish oaks near Hog Creek, where early settlers arrived by wagon, horseback, buggy, and on foot to hear Baptist sermons. In the fall of 1872, monthly services moved to a schoolhouse built near Hog Creek by Johnny Carruth and Charlie Mitchell. Originally called Rockdale Baptist Church, the congregation built its first sanctuary in Desdemona soon after the community's first post office was established in 1877 and around that time took the name Desdemona First Baptist Church. Box suppers, baptisms, picnic services at area lakes and water tanks, and lengthy revivals became routine congregational activities. After oil transformed Desdemona from a small village into a booming oil town by 1919, the congregation built a new sanctuary at this site in 1921-22 on land donated by C.H. and Fannie Genoway, and it continued serving the local community through various missionary efforts.