Black Education in Seguin
Seguin, Guadalupe County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Sponsored by the Second Baptist Church, the first public school for blacks in Seguin opened in 1871. Through the efforts of the Rev. Leonard Ilsley (1818-1903), and the Rev. William Baton Ball (1840-1923), a frame school was built on this site, and named Abraham Lincoln School. Ball was the first principal. In 1892, the Lincoln School became a part of the Seguin Public School System. The name was changed to Ball High School in 1925, and ceased to be separate facility for blacks in 1966 when the Seguin Public School System was integrated. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1871, in the hopeful early years of Reconstruction, Seguin's Second Baptist Church sponsored the first public school for Black children in the town, and two ministers — Leonard Ilsley and William Baton Ball — saw a frame schoolhouse raised on this site and named it the Abraham Lincoln School, with Ball as its first principal. It joined the public system in 1892 and was renamed Ball High School in 1925, serving Seguin's Black community until integration in 1966. Its long life traces the whole arc from freedom to full inclusion.
Why it matters
The school embodies the determination of newly freed African Americans to educate their children, and its 1966 integration marks the end of nearly a century of separate schooling in one Texas town.
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Related people
- · Rev. Leonard Ilsley
- · Rev. William Baton Ball
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sweet Home Vocational and Agricultural School
Seguin, TX
From 1924 to 1962 the Sweet Home Vocational and Agricultural School educated Black students across southwest Guadalupe County, one of six local schools built with help from the Rosenwald Fund — the philanthropy of Sears president Julius Rosenwald that raised modern schoolhouses for rural African Americans. Completed in 1925 by master carpenter Henry Singletary for $5,500, the four-teacher school grew to include dormitories and industrial buildings and served as a regional county training school offering education beyond the eighth grade. Accredited as a high school by 1935, its students won wide agricultural, athletic, and academic honors before it closed with integration in 1962.
Juan Seguin School
Seguin, TX
As Mexican and Mexican American families filled Guadalupe County in the early 20th century—many fleeing the Mexican Revolution—Seguin's school board voted in 1902 to open a separate school for their children. Juan Seguin School began in 1903 in a rented house and, after failed and then successful bond votes, moved into a permanent building in 1918, growing over decades from one room to a full campus with an auditorium. It merged and reorganized through the 1970s before Juan Seguin Elementary finally closed in 2010.
Second Baptist Church of Seguin
Seguin, TX
When the Civil War ended, freedmen in Seguin sought places to worship and to school their children. On November 16, 1865, the Rev. Leonard Ilsley—a Maine native who stayed to aid the freedmen and helped organize churches across the county—gathered a small group to found the Second Baptist Church of Seguin. Under the Rev. Hiram Wilson, once enslaved himself, the congregation bought its present site in 1874 and built both a sanctuary and a school; members included Buffalo Soldiers and educator William Ball, who helped organize the Abraham Lincoln School.
Hugo and Georgia Gibson House
Seguin, TX
When Texas Lutheran College relocated to Seguin in 1929, it brought with it Hugo and Georgia Gibson, a scholarly couple who would shape the young institution for decades. Hugo, trained in theology and classical Greek, led the foreign languages department and founded the college's celebrated a cappella choir; Georgia, holding a master's from Columbia, served as Dean of Women and taught mathematics. The pair, instrumental in winning the college's accreditation, built this frame house on Erkel Avenue in 1934 and lived here until Hugo's death in 1963.