The first church in Caldwell County, the Clear Fork Baptist Church, was organized in 1848. Among the early churches were a Primitive Baptist congregation organized at Prairie Lea in 1851, Christian and Episcopal churches organized at Lockhart in 1852, and a Primitive Baptist church organized at Tinney Creek in 1852. By 1870 the county had eleven churches: five Baptist, two Methodist, two Presbyterian, one Episcopal, and one Christian. Few communities had their own preachers; itinerant ministers went from place to place, sometimes staying two or three months in a town and teaching school to help earn their keep. Camp meetings also played an important role in the county's religious development, especially after 1870, and people came as far as thirty miles to attend them. The first Catholic church in the county was St. Mary's of the Visitation, which was built in Lockhart in the mid-1880s.