1938-1991
Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Davis, founders of the Baptist Spanish Publishing House, were appointed missionaries to Mexico by the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention on July 5, 1904, and arrived in Toluca on December 4, 1904. With a “press fund” of $450.00 collected before leaving the USA for the purpose of starting a Spanish publishing enterprise, Mr. Davis set up a press and paper cutter in the kitchen of their home. Soon tracts and other small items were being produced. The first large job was produced in the Spring of 1905, when Davis was asked to print the El Expositor Biblico and Nuestros Ninos, both of which were edited by J. G. Chastain. After temporary locations in Leon and Mexico City and following the outbreak of violence in Mexico in December 1910, the Baptist Spanish Publishing House press relocated to El Paso, Texas, in 1917. In 1937, the BSPH purchased a building just outside the city limits of El Paso, which had originally been constructed by the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention as a tubercular sanitorium. In 1950, the publishing house became independent of the Mexican Mission. The BSPH distributed Spanish-language materials widely throughout the Spanish-speaking world. The publication house began producing materials in English in 1976.
Materials in this web presentation include correspondence, historical background items, newspaper clippings, and pamphlets from the Baptist History File on the Baptist Spanish Publishing House at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. Items are any word searchable.
