Cedar Grove Baptist Church
Satin, Falls County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Newly emancipated blacks assembled on August 20, 1865, to form a congregation at Col. Ruben Buhl's plantation on the Brazos River (2 1/2 Mi. NE). The sixteen charter members named their fellowship Buhl's Quarters Baptist Church and met in a log cabin with the Rev. Joe Moore as their fist pastor. The Brazos River area often flooded, and in 1885 the congregation moved one mile west to higher ground donated by Col. Edward J. Gurley. The frame building there was named Rock Dam Baptist Church after the new site. According to local tradition, members were called to regular and special services by a bugle blown by brother Mose Wells. In 1890 Col. Gurley gave the church a bell that announced activity at the site. In that year the church listed almost 100 members, and the name was changed to Cedar Grove Baptist Church after the venerable trees shading the sanctuary. By 1924 membership had grown to 250, due primarily to the influx of sharecroppers on the surrounding farmland. By the early 1940s, however, land around the church was being stripped for gravel beds. In 1945 the congregation acquired this site in Satin and built a new church in 1946 under the leadership of the Rev. Hogan Guy, still using the 1890 bell.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On August 20, 1865, sixteen newly emancipated men and women gathered on a Brazos River plantation to form their own congregation, first called Buhl's Quarters Baptist Church, meeting in a log cabin. As floods, growth, and finally the stripping of nearby land for gravel forced repeated moves, the church was renamed Rock Dam and then Cedar Grove, carrying with it a bell given in 1890 that still called worshippers when the congregation built anew in Satin. Local memory even recalls a brother summoning members to service with a bugle.
Why it matters
The church traces the birth of independent Black religious institutions in the first months of freedom after emancipation, and their endurance through Reconstruction, sharecropping, and repeated displacement.
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Related people
- · Joe Moore
- · Edward J. Gurley
- · Hogan Guy
Related events
- · Emancipation
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rev. Nelson T. Denson and Marlin Missionary Baptist Church
Marlin, TX
Born into slavery in Arkansas in 1845 and brought to Falls County as a boy, Nelson Taylor Denson was taken into the Confederate Army by his enslaver during the Civil War before returning to Marlin as a freedman. Educated and inspired by Sam Houston's example, he founded Marlin Missionary Baptist Church in 1868—the county's earliest Black congregation—and established Black schools that opened formal education to the area's freed people. In 1882 he became the county's first elected Black official.
Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church
Waco, TX
Organized in October 1886 for the African-American community southeast of Waco, this congregation first worshiped under a brush arbor across the street from the marker site. An Anglo Baptist minister, the Rev. Ural Crain, led the members for a year until they called their first African-American pastor, the Rev. Ben Crain. Through music, missions, and outreach it has remained a focal point of the surrounding McLennan County community.
Greater Providence Missionary Baptist Church
Marlin, TX
In 1893 a dozen worshippers in the Missionary Baptist tradition, led by the Rev. N.T. Denson, gathered in a Marlin schoolhouse and named their new congregation Providence to mark what they saw as divine direction. They worshipped under a brush arbor before raising their first sanctuary, only to lose two buildings and their earliest records to fires in 1941 and 1963. Rebuilding after the second blaze, the members renamed the church Greater Providence and kept growing through music, teaching, and community outreach.
Bull Hill Cemetery
Cedar Springs vicinity, TX
One of the oldest cemeteries in Falls County, Bull Hill served for more than a century as a burial ground for African Americans, first for people enslaved on Churchill Jones's vast plantation and later for the freedpeople of the China Grove community. After emancipation, families such as the Baileys, Currys, and Taylors built a church, a school, and a vibrant freedmen's settlement, with some acquiring land and starting businesses. Archaeology and oral history have since confirmed more than 100 burials at this hallowed site, where the last interment took place in 1961.