Batson Prairie and the present-day town of Batson took their names from the pioneer Batson family, who had settled in the area by the 1840s. Matilda Guedry and her family were among the early settlers on Batson Prairie, and after she purchased a large tract of land in 1873, her oldest son, Jerisan Guedry, donated one acre in 1896 for a community school. A one-room schoolhouse called Batson School served the area for ten years. In 1897, Pastor Sims Stovall and eight charter members organized Batson Prairie Baptist Church, whose early services met in the schoolhouse until 1905, when Jerisan Guedry donated adjoining land for a church building. The congregation later built new facilities that continued serving the community. Jerisan Guedry and his son-in-law Marion Smith also donated land for a cemetery, where the first recorded burial was Nathaniel Foreman, Guedry's grandson, in 1900. Guedry Cemetery, maintained through a perpetual trust, contains more than 2,000 burials, including descendants of the area's early settlers, and continues to serve the community.