Decatur Baptist College
Decatur, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Decatur Baptist College, world's first institution to be planned (in 1898) as a junior college. This hall was built in 1892, for an earlier school.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Decatur Baptist College is remembered as the world's first institution planned, in 1898, as a junior college — a new model of two-year higher education. The surviving hall was built in 1892 for an earlier school on the site.
Why it matters
As the first purpose-planned junior college, Decatur Baptist College marks the birthplace of an idea that reshaped American higher education and access to it.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Decatur
Decatur, TX
Organized in 1856 under the Rev. J.T. Willis, this Baptist congregation first met in a Taylorsville log cabin in the town that became Decatur. By the late 1880s its pastor was preaching to both the white congregation and Decatur's African American community, and the church worked closely with the school that grew into Decatur Baptist College. Generations of pastors kept the congregation woven into the town's civic and educational life.
East Side Elementary School
Decatur, TX
Established in 1882, East Side Elementary was the only school for African American students in Wise County, a one-room frame building near Mrs. Missouri Brown's home that also served as a church. Students warmed themselves at a pot-bellied stove and made do with furnishings and textbooks discarded by Decatur's white schools; those who finished eighth grade had to travel 30 to 45 miles to Denton or Fort Worth to continue. The school operated until desegregation in 1965.
Preskitt Cemetery
Decatur, TX
The land here was first deeded to the trustees of the Lee School community in 1885, and the following year half of it was set aside for a burial ground, with the earliest marked grave belonging to infant Pearl Hobbs in 1890. Those laid to rest include the first farm families of the 1870s and 1880s and a number of military veterans, among them Union Army veteran and early school trustee James W. Haynes. Once tied to a Baptist church that was torn down around 1930, the cemetery held some 172 known graves by the turn of the 21st century.
Sand Hill Community
Sand Hill, TX
Gathered around a good spring at the foot of the hill that named it, Sand Hill became a cradle of pioneer life in the country that would become Wise County. The first Methodist church in the area was organized in Jim Brooks's home in 1854, and a donated cabin nicknamed "Old Swayback" for its sagging ridgepole soon served all faiths as church and, by 1855, probably the county's first school. A campground, gristmill, Masonic lodge, and cemetery followed, the graveyard now holding settlers, Civil War veterans, and the noted Texas Ranger Ira Long.