Hopkinsville Community, A Colony of Freedmen
Cuero, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Members of the Hopkins family came to De Witt County in 1854 as slaves of Judge Henry Clay Pleasants (d. 1899). They worked for a time on a Gonzales County plantation and returned to this area after the Civil War as freedmen. In 1872 Henry Hopkins bought 42 acres of land and established the Hopkinsville community (1 mile west). Residents of the settlement organized the Antioch Baptist Church in 1873 and began a school about ten years later. Although the school closed in 1956, members of the Antioch Baptist Church continue to worship near Hopkinsville.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Hopkins family came to DeWitt County in 1854 enslaved by Judge Henry Clay Pleasants and returned after the Civil War as free people. In 1872 Henry Hopkins bought 42 acres and founded the Hopkinsville community, where residents organized the Antioch Baptist Church in 1873 and started a school about a decade later. Though the school closed in 1956, the congregation Hopkinsville's founders built still gathers to worship nearby.
Why it matters
It records the powerful Reconstruction-era story of freedpeople acquiring land and building churches and schools to sustain independent African American communities.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Henry Hopkins
- · Judge Henry Clay Pleasants
Related events
- · Founding of Antioch Baptist Church
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Daule School
Cuero, TX
Founded in 1892 as a one-room wooden schoolhouse, Cuero Colored High School was the town's first school for Black children, drawing pupils from farm families who could attend only when field work allowed. Principal Eugene Daule guided Black education in DeWitt County for four decades, stretching meager, unequal resources as far as they would go; the school was renamed in his honor in 1937. Under later leaders it built a celebrated band and a broad curriculum before closing in 1965 when Cuero's schools finally integrated.
Leonard Roy Harmon
Cuero, TX
Born in Cuero, Leonard Roy Harmon joined the Navy in 1939 and served as a mess attendant aboard the cruiser U.S.S. San Francisco. During the Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942, as enemy fire raked the ship, Harmon helped evacuate the wounded and was killed shielding an injured shipmate with his own body, earning the Navy Cross. In 1943 the destroyer escort U.S.S. Harmon—the first U.S. warship named for a Black man—was christened by his mother.
Hillside Cemetery
Cuero, TX
The town of Cuero was surveyed and incorporated in 1873 as the railroad reached inland from the doomed coastal port of Indianola. In 1875 the land company set aside twelve acres here for a municipal burial ground, and by 1880 local women had formed a cemetery association to maintain it, hiring a groundskeeper and later endowing its upkeep. The grounds grew to absorb the once-segregated African American cemetery, Evergreen, and hold veterans back to the Mexican War alongside victims of the Indianola hurricanes.
Lockhart Community Cemetery
Cuero, TX
These three acres are the oldest known African American burial ground in DeWitt County, tied to the once-thriving farming community of Lockhart whose earliest settlers included sharecroppers and former slaves. Formally purchased in 1910 by the Lockhart Colored Cemetery Association, the grounds hold 263 known graves—among them many veterans and Paul Wimbish, a former slave who became a successful county businessman. Handmade concrete headstones with decorative tilework and hand-etched inscriptions exemplify a Southern folk tradition of memorializing family and faith.