Our Arklahoma Heritage: The bloodline of a pioneer Boone County minister trickled down to a Great Society presidential plan
- Dennis McCaslin
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
George Washington Baines was born near Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1809. His father, Thomas Baines, was a Baptist preacher, and the household revolved around faith and service.
George followed in those footsteps, receiving his license to preach and ordination under his father's guidance. In 1837, seeking relief from ongoing stomach problems, he moved to what was then Carroll County settling along Crooked Creek about two miles southwest of present-day Harrison in what later became Boone County.
As a missionary supported by the Baptist Home Mission Society of New York, he focused on the growing frontier communities. Between 1837 and 1844, he organized three churches and baptized more than 150 people, helping establish Baptist congregations in a region of log cabins and scattered farms.
Beyond the pulpit, Baines entered public life briefly. In 1842 and 1843, he represented Carroll County in the Arkansas Legislature, addressing local needs with the same practical approach he brought to his ministry.
Health concerns and new opportunities led him to leave Arkansas in 1844.
He moved first to Louisiana, then to Texas around 1850.
In Texas, he pastored churches, edited a Baptist newspaper, and served as president of Baylor University during the Civil War period.
He also became the personal minister to Sam Houston and his family. Baines married Melissa Ann Butler in 1840, and they had ten children before her death in 1865.
He later remarried and had additional children
.He continued his work in the Baptist tradition until his death on December 28, 1882, in Belton, Bell County,
He was buried in Salado Cemetery in Salado, Bell County, Texas, where he rests alongside his second wife, Cynthia Williams, and one of his sons, Taliaferro.
.The George Washington Baines House is located in the city of Salado, Bell County, Texas.
It was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1981[and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983..
What ties this frontier preacher to a much larger chapter in American history is this: through his son Joseph Wilson Baines, George Washington Baines was the great-grandfather of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who served as the 36th President of the United States.
In Boone County, the memory of those early years along Crooked Creek remains a small but steady part of the local story---one man's work planting churches and guiding settlers in a rugged place, long before his name echoed in the halls of national power.
