Globe Hill Community and Baptist Church
Giddings, Lee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
George Coleman Truitt, founder of this predominantly African American community, bought land in the area and built at least nine box houses for his tenant farmers. Truitt also ran the community’s only business, a general store. In 1887, Truitt and Simon P. Davis selected a school site on a rocky promontory called Rocky Hill, for which Truitt named the community. He later renamed it Globe Hill. Truitt donated the land for the school and later provided the site for the cemetery. The schoolhouse, completed in November 1887, was also used for church services. The first teacher was Julia Donovan. In the spring of 1889, it was enlarged to accommodate the growing student population. By 1908, students from Jones Colony and the Joseph and Margaret Dockery settlement began transferring to the Globe Hill school and enrollment increased to forty-six students. The school was replaced in the early 1920s with a four-room Rosenwald School which was later annexed and moved to the Post Oak School in 1954. The Globe Hill Baptist Church was formed and organized by the community in 1912. An educator and reverend, Frank Ruffin, became the first pastor of the church. Under his leadership, the congregation grew to more than 96 members, with up to 200 attending at different times. Reverend Ruffin served the church until he passed away in 1939. A women’s mission was established that visited and cared for the needy and sick in the community. In the 1960s, the church was remodeled. Most of the community has left but former residents return each year for the church’s annual celebrations. (2012)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
George Coleman Truitt founded this predominantly African-American community, building homes for tenant farmers and running its only store, then in 1887 donating land atop a rocky rise for a school that doubled as a church. As families from neighboring settlements sent their children, the school grew and was eventually rebuilt as a four-room Rosenwald school. The Globe Hill Baptist Church, organized in 1912 under the Reverend Frank Ruffin, swelled to hundreds and still draws former residents back each year for its annual celebrations.
Why it matters
Globe Hill shows how a Black farming community in the segregated South built its own school, church, and mutual-aid networks—and how those bonds still call its scattered descendants home.
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Related people
- · George Coleman Truitt
- · Simon P. Davis
- · Frank Ruffin
Themes & tags
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