Brewington Baptist Church
Grapeland, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This church served the freed slaves of the Percilla, Augusta and Glover communities. A small wood-framed church was built in 1880 and served as the church building until 1906. This first location on Percilla Road also served as the Elliott Springs School for the African American children in the area. It is one of the oldest churches in Houston County. Freed slaves after the Civil War were determined to build their own church, and Brewington Baptist was promptly built on former plantation property. The church was named after the first pastor, Reverend Sam Brewer. After the first church building burned in 1906, the second location for the church was on the Covington family farm. The third location was on the William Fillmore Murchison family farm. The final and current location of the church is also on the former W.F. Murchison family farm in the Augusta community. The road from Brewington Baptist to Augusta was home to several other African American churches at the time. Though the African American churches and religious groups had varied beliefs and denominations of faith, most have held membership with Christian training institutions. County-wide Sunday School and B.T.U. Congress was organized after the creation of the Palestine District Association. In 1909, the Bowen District Association of Houston County was organized and later consolidated with the Palestine District in 1939. It consisted of over 50 Baptist churches in Anderson and Houston County areas that united to promote religious education and missions in East Texas. For more than 130 years, Brewington Baptist Church has served the religious community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Determined to worship in a church of their own after emancipation, freed people of the Percilla, Augusta, and Glover communities built a small wood-framed church on former plantation land in 1880, naming it for their first pastor, the Reverend Sam Brewer. The same building served as the Elliott Springs School for local African American children. Over more than 130 years the congregation moved several times among family farms, and it joined the broader Baptist associations that promoted religious education across East Texas.
Why it matters
One of Houston County's oldest Black churches, Brewington Baptist shows how freed people made a house of worship and a schoolhouse the cornerstones of their newly independent communities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years right after the Civil War, the newly freed people of East Texas faced an urgent, practical question: how do we build a life that is truly our own? Emancipation was a legal fact, but a free community had to be made, institution by institution — and among the very first institutions that formerly enslaved people built for themselves were churches. A church was more than a place to worship; it was the one space a Black community could fully own and govern in a world that denied them nearly everything else.
This is the Reconstruction and Gilded Age setting for Brewington Baptist Church, founded to serve the freed people of the Percilla, Augusta, and Glover communities of Houston County. The first small wood-framed building went up in 1880 on Percilla Road, on former plantation property — land that had recently held people in bondage now holding a congregation that governed itself. That reversal is the quiet heart of the story.
Education and worship went hand in hand in these communities, because both had so long been denied. It is telling that the same 1880 building served as the Elliott Springs School for the area's African American children. In a single frame structure, a community placed its two most precious ambitions: to pray freely and to learn.
People & events
The congregation was founded by freed people determined to have a church of their own, and they named it for their first pastor, the Reverend Sam Brewer. That first building, raised in 1880, stood until it burned in 1906 — a hard blow, but not the end. The story of Brewington Baptist is one of persistence through displacement: after the fire the congregation moved to the Covington family farm, then to the William Fillmore Murchison family farm, and finally to its present home, also on the former Murchison land in the Augusta community.
That road from the church toward Augusta was, in those years, lined with other African American congregations — a whole landscape of Black religious life clustered together. Though these churches and groups held varied beliefs and denominations, most kept ties to Christian training institutions, knitting worship to education across the whole area.
That impulse toward organized learning grew into something larger. A county-wide Sunday School and B.T.U. Congress was organized after the founding of the Palestine District Association, and in 1909 the Bowen District Association of Houston County was formed, later merging with the Palestine District in 1939. At its height this network gathered more than fifty Baptist churches across the Anderson and Houston County areas, uniting them to promote religious education and missions throughout East Texas.
Its place in the American story
Brewington Baptist Church is a window onto one of the most important chapters in American history: the way formerly enslaved people, in the span of a single generation, built the independent institutions of freedom. Across the South after 1865, the Black church became the foundation of community life — the seat of worship, education, mutual aid, and self-government — and this congregation, one of the oldest churches in its county, is a clear local example of that national pattern.
The fact that its first building doubled as a school speaks to a truth that ran through the whole era. For people long forbidden to read, literacy was inseparable from liberty, and the church-schoolhouse was where that conviction took physical form. Brewington's story compresses the twin hungers of emancipation — faith and learning — into one modest frame building on former plantation land.
The growth of the district associations shows the next stage of that story: isolated congregations reaching toward one another to build something durable and regional. Fifty churches uniting to promote education and missions is the grassroots infrastructure of a free people, and it endured. That a congregation founded in 1880 has served its community for well over a century is itself a monument to that endurance.
If you visit
This is a place to visit with imagination and respect, because so much of its story is carried in memory rather than in surviving structures. As you approach through the countryside around Grapeland, picture the road toward Augusta as it once was — dotted with African American churches, a whole community's spiritual life spread along a single route. That landscape is the real monument.
Let the church's long journey settle in your mind: from Percilla Road in 1880, through the fire of 1906, to the Covington farm, the Murchison farm, and its present home. A congregation that moved this many times and still endures for well over a century tells you how much the community was willing to carry to keep it alive. You are looking at continuity, not stone.
If you're building a road trip through East Texas history, Brewington Baptist belongs on an itinerary that traces the story of freedom after slavery — the founding of Black communities, their churches, and their schools. Come quietly, remember that this remains a living religious community, and take time to reflect on what it meant for a people to build, and rebuild, a house of worship and learning entirely their own.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Sam Brewer
- · William Fillmore Murchison
Themes & tags
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