From A Better Day is Dawning: History of the First One Hundred Years of the First Baptist Church of Bryan, Texas, November 1966

The earliest record states that the sixteen persons who organized the First Baptist Church that Sunday of November 18, 1866, met in an abandoned Bryan saloon. They sat on planks across beer kegs, an arrangement that must have made them more keenly aware of the need for "the better day" that Sara Dodson predicted………………..
The first pastor of the church was William Bartlett Eaves who served until January 1868, when resigned because of poor health. He remained a member of the church until 1879 and lived until June 21, 1895. His grave is in the Thompson Creek Cemetery. Mr Eaves seems to have been by vocation a blacksmith, and his shop was located near what is now Foodtown in a block which he owned. Although not highly educated, he was an ordained minister and a devout man.
Mr Eaves came to Texas from Alabama, where he was born November 6, 1819, and later settled in Burleson county. He was ordained by the Provident Church in that county and was pastor at Cameron prior to coming to Bryan. Although his tenure was brief, the resolutions drafted by Judge W. Davis for the church upon his resignation stated that "above all others," the church owed "Brother Eaves a debt of gratitude for his indefatigable labor in the organization of the Bryan Baptist Church." He was due their love for the efficient, kindly, and affectionate was he pastured the church. Finally, they "hoped to meet him in a better world than this around our Father's Throne." And until such time they would "endeavor to raise some means" of paying him for his past service. Afterwards, in May 1869, the church voted to give him the church organ as "part remuneration" although he was already part owner of it.

Children were: Leanna Gertrude Eaves Pruitt, Zachariah Taylor Eaves, Annie Hasseltine Judson Eaves Miller, Dr. William Gay Eaves, Samuel Luther Eaves, Mary A. "Mollie" Caldwell Eaves King Roberson, Nancy Elizabeth "Bettie" Eaves Robinson, Archibald Howard Eaves, Dr. John Fortune Eaves, James Tolbert Eaves, and Rufus Callaway "Calla" Eaves.