First Missionary Baptist Church
Huntsville, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
IN 1867, HUNTSVILLE METHODISTS AND BAPTISTS SHARED THE UNION CHURCH. TWO YEARS LATER, THE BAPTISTS BUILT A SEPARATE CHURCH IN THE ROGERSVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD CALLED FIRST MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH, WHICH WAS ORGANIZED BY REV. J.J. RHINEHARDT WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF “MOTHER” SARAH ROLLING. ON FEB. 27, 1872, THE CHURCH PURCHASED PROPERTY ON 10TH STREET, NEAR THE PRESENT LOCATION OF AVENUE P AND 10TH, FROM PHYLLIS RANDALL FOR $40 IN GOLD BY CLARK ROLAND (ROLLING), JOHN JAMES AND YORK HENDERSON WHO WERE THE CHURCH TRUSTEES. IT IS SAID THAT THIS SITE WAS WHERE GENERAL SAM HOUSTON AND A LAWYER NAMED WYLIE (ANDREW P. WILEY) DEBATED THE QUESTIONS OF SUCCESSION AND SLAVERY. A SECOND TRACT OF LAND ON THE WEST BANK OF TANYARD BRANCH AT THE NORTH SIDE OF FANNIN (10TH) STREET WAS PURCHASED FROM ELLEN MONTGOMERY FOR $100 BY TRUSTEES ON AUG. 4, 1877. THE MEMBERSHIP GREW UNDER REV. J. R. WOODALL’S LEADERSHIP AND THE CHURCH REMAINED STRONG UNTIL HIS UNTIMELY DEATH. UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION OF REV. WOODALL, A MODERN BRICK STRUCTURE WAS BUILT IN 1952 AT 1530 10TH STREET ON LAND BOUGHT FROM THE BOLDIN FAMILY, ACROSS FROM THE SITE OF THE ORIGINAL CHURCH, A WOODEN STRUCTURE, WHICH WAS LATER DEMOLISHED. THE CHURCH HAS HAD SEVERAL NOTABLE MEMBERS INCLUDING PROFESSOR SAMUEL WALKER HOUSTON, DEACON J.M. METTAWER, AND JOSHUA HOUSTON, SR. IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE COMMUNITY HAVE BEEN THE CENTRAL DISTRICT MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION, “THE YOUTH REVIVAL” IN WHICH THE YOUTH DEPARTMENT DEVELOPED A SCHOLARSHIP AND FREE LUNCH PROGRAM FOR THE SICK AND SHUT-IN, SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASSES FOR THE ELDERLY AND YOUNG, FOOD DRIVES, BLACK HISTORY MONTH EVENTS, AND A SCHOLARSHIP FUND FOR GRADUATING HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS. TODAY, THE CHURCH CONTINUES AS A FOUNDATION FOR COMMUNITY PRIDE AND PROGRESS.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After sharing the Union Church with Methodists, Huntsville's Black Baptists organized their own First Missionary Baptist Church in 1869 in the Rogersville neighborhood, led by Rev. J.J. Rhinehardt with "Mother" Sarah Rolling. Trustees bought their first lot on 10th Street in 1872 for forty dollars in gold, and the congregation grew across generations, counting educator Samuel Walker Houston and Joshua Houston among its members. From food drives to scholarships, the church became a lasting engine of community life.
Why it matters
Independent Black churches like this were the first institutions freedpeople controlled outright, anchoring worship, education, and civic organizing after slavery.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
First Missionary Baptist Church took shape in the first years after the Civil War, during Reconstruction, when emancipated people across the South were building institutions of their own for the first time. In 1867, Huntsville's Methodists and Baptists — Black congregants included — still shared the Union Church. Two years later, in 1869, the Baptists organized their own separate congregation in the Rogersville neighborhood.
That move toward an independent church was one of the most common and meaningful acts of early freedom. Under slavery, worship had been supervised, constrained, and often conducted under white oversight. To gather in a church you organized, named, and governed yourselves was to claim a freedom long denied — the freedom to worship and to assemble on your own terms.
The congregation grew during the Reconstruction and Gilded Age decades that followed, buying land and building as it went. That it not only survived but strengthened through the hardening of Jim Crow says a great deal about the role such a church played — not merely a place of Sunday worship, but a durable center of gravity for an entire community.
People & events
The founders' names anchor the story. The church was organized by Rev. J.J. Rhinehardt with the help of "Mother" Sarah Rolling — the same pair remembered for their leadership in the Rogersville community — and the honorific "Mother" tells you how central Sarah Rolling was to the congregation's life. The early trustees, Clark Roland (Rolling), John James, and York Henderson, are named too, ordinary men entrusted with the extraordinary task of securing property for a people only recently freed.
The land purchases read like milestones of self-determination. On February 27, 1872, the trustees bought property on 10th Street from Phyllis Randall for forty dollars in gold; in 1877, a second tract was purchased from Ellen Montgomery for one hundred dollars. There is even a striking piece of local lore attached to the first site — that it was where General Sam Houston and a lawyer named Wiley once debated the questions of secession and slavery, layering an older chapter of Texas history onto the ground the congregation made its own.
The church grew across generations of leadership. Under Rev. J.R. Woodall it flourished, and in 1952 a modern brick sanctuary rose at 1530 10th Street, across from the original wooden structure. Its members included the noted educator Professor Samuel Walker Houston, Deacon J.M. Mettawer, and Joshua Houston, Sr. — names that link this congregation to the wider founding families of Black Huntsville. Over time the church built up a rich civic life: a missionary association, a youth revival, a scholarship fund, food drives, Black History Month events, and programs for the sick and the elderly.
Its place in the American story
The independent Black church is one of the foundational institutions of African-American life, and First Missionary Baptist is a clear example of why. After emancipation, the church was frequently the first institution freedpeople controlled outright — owning the building, choosing the pastor, keeping the books. That autonomy made these churches the natural home not just for worship but for education, mutual aid, and civic organizing.
You can watch that broader role unfold in this one congregation's history. The scholarship funds, food drives, and youth programs the marker records are exactly the kinds of community services that Black churches across the country provided when other institutions excluded or ignored their members. The church became a school, a relief agency, and an organizing hall all at once.
The steady progression of land purchases and buildings, culminating in a new brick sanctuary in the mid-20th century, mirrors the trajectory of countless congregations that grew from modest wooden structures into permanent community anchors. In that sense, First Missionary Baptist stands in for a national pattern: the Black church as the enduring foundation of community pride, self-help, and progress across the generations from Reconstruction onward.
If you visit
Come to this church in the Rogersville neighborhood thinking about layers of time. There has been a First Missionary Baptist presence here since 1869, and the marker points you to the geography of its growth — the 10th Street sites, the move to the brick sanctuary built in 1952 across from where the original wooden church once stood.
Let the small, concrete facts do their work on your imagination. Forty dollars in gold, paid in 1872 to secure a first piece of ground; named trustees taking on that responsibility for the whole congregation; and the local tradition that Sam Houston himself once debated secession and slavery on this very spot. Standing here, you feel more than a century of a community's life stacked on one plot of Texas earth.
Remember, too, that this is an active congregation and a living institution, not a relic — approach it with the respect you'd give any house of worship. If you're exploring the historic African-American story of Huntsville, this marker pairs naturally with the surrounding Rogersville neighborhood, and together they let you trace how freedpeople built worship, education, and community into something that has lasted for generations.
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
- · J.J. Rhinehardt
- · Sarah Rolling
- · Samuel Walker Houston
- · Joshua Houston, Sr.
Themes & tags
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