Greenvine Schools
Greenvine, Washington County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Public education in the rural community of Greenvine began in 1880, when the Greenvine School was established near this site. The students, predominantly German in descent and Lutheran and Baptist in faith, began attending classes taught in German at the Emmanuel Lutheran Church parsonage. Classes later were relocated to a site near the Greenvine Baptist Church Cemetery and finally to a building 70 feet south of this site. A school for local African American children known as the Waller Chapel School (1.75 mi. SE) was established in 1895. Classes were held in a wood-frame building that also served as a house of worship for the Waller Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church congregation. In 1949, after schools in the Greenvine, Latium, and Burton communities were consolidated, the Greenvine schools closed. Local students began attending the Burton Rural High School, which offered 12 grades of instruction. The last Greenvine schoolhouse was relocated to the new school site. The Waller Chapel Schoolhouse continued to be used for church services until 1965. (1992)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Public schooling reached the German farming settlement of Greenvine in 1880, where lessons were first taught in German in a Lutheran parsonage. Fifteen years later, a separate school for local Black children opened at Waller Chapel, sharing a wood-frame building with an African Methodist Episcopal congregation. Consolidation in 1949 sent Greenvine's students to Burton, and the old schoolhouse was moved to join them.
Why it matters
The two schools side by side tell the intertwined but segregated story of rural education in Texas — immigrant and African American communities each building their own path to learning.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Wesley School
Wesley, TX
Wesley took its name from the Czech immigrants who settled here in 1859 and built an early Czech community, where Professor Josef Masik first tutored children in his home. Schooling moved from a reading-club building to the Wesley Brethren Church and through a succession of larger structures as the farming community grew, reaching this site in 1911. Rural decline emptied the classrooms, and the school merged with Brenham in 1961; its last building burned a year later.
Brenham Normal and Industrial College
Brenham, TX
Brenham Normal and Industrial College grew out of a 1905 meeting of Black and white community leaders after educator Daniel Porter came seeking land for a school for African Americans, and it was legally established in 1906. Its board was led by A.L. Sledge, a former slave who had served in the Texas Legislature, and its inaugural class of ten swelled to 130 students by 1913. The college trained future schoolteachers alongside courses in trades, business, agriculture, and domestic arts before closing in 1927, though its theological department carried on.
Fayetteville Brethren Church Cemetery
Fayetteville, TX
Czech-Moravian Brethren settled at Ross Prairie in the early 1850s and, in 1855, held what is remembered as the first Czech worship service in Texas. Their society Osveta founded the state's first Czech-English school in 1871, and in 1874 the Jecmeneks gave land for a church, parish house, school, and this cemetery. Among the graves is that of Reverend Jindrich Juren, who served as pastor and schoolmaster here for some 45 years.
Zimmerscheidt-Leyendecker Cemetery
Columbus, TX
Frederick and Margaret Zimmerscheidt immigrated from Germany to Mexican Texas in 1832, later joined by their daughter Josephine and her husband Johann Leyendecker, whose glowing letters home helped draw other German emigrants to the region. The family championed local education and, choosing to bury their dead near home rather than in nearby Frelsburg, established this family cemetery in 1856. Still in use by descendants who gather each year, it holds soldiers, public officials, and horticulturist J. F. Leyendecker of the noted Pearfield nursery.