Jacob Fontaine
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(c. 1808 - 1898) Jacob Fontaine was born in Arkansas and came to Austin about 1850 as a slave of Episcopal minister Edward Fontaine. In 1864 Jacob began preaching separate service for fellow slaves attending the First Baptist Church, then founded the First Baptist Church, Colored. About 1867, Jacob also established five other churches in this area and a county association of black Baptists. He was politically active, published the "Gold Dollar," an early black newspaper, and urged black voters to support Austin's bid for the University of Texas in 1881. He is buried here in an unmarked grave. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born into slavery around 1808, Jacob Fontaine came to Austin about 1850 as the enslaved property of an Episcopal minister. In 1864 he began preaching to fellow enslaved people and, after emancipation, founded the First Baptist Church, Colored, and roughly five other congregations along with a county association of Black Baptists. He published the "Gold Dollar," one of Austin's earliest Black newspapers, and campaigned to bring the University of Texas to the city.
Why it matters
Fontaine's churches, newspaper, and political organizing show how freedpeople built independent institutions in the Reconstruction South, claiming a public voice in the decades after slavery.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Jacob Fontaine's story unfolds against the most wrenching transformation in American history: the end of slavery and the struggle of freedpeople to build free lives in its aftermath. Born in Arkansas around 1808, he was brought to Austin about 1850 as an enslaved man, the property of an Episcopal minister. For the first half-century of his life, he lived under bondage in a slaveholding South.
Then came the Civil War and emancipation, and with them a brief, electric window — the Reconstruction era — when Black Southerners built churches, schools, newspapers, and political organizations at astonishing speed. In Austin as across the South, freedpeople moved quickly to claim the institutions that slavery had denied them, above all the right to worship, to gather, and to speak in their own voice.
The decades that followed, stretching into the Gilded Age, were a time of both flourishing and mounting resistance. The independent Black congregations and newspapers founded in these years became the bedrock of community life — and Fontaine, who lived until 1898, was present at their creation.
People & events
Jacob Fontaine's public life began even before freedom. In 1864, while still enslaved, he started preaching separate services for fellow enslaved people who attended Austin's First Baptist Church. From that beginning grew the First Baptist Church, Colored — an independent congregation that gave Black worshippers a church of their own.
His energy did not stop at one church. About 1867, in the first flush of emancipation, he established five other churches in the area and organized a county association of Black Baptists, knitting the scattered congregations into a network. In doing so he helped lay the institutional foundation of Black religious life in and around Austin.
Fontaine was also a man of the printed word and the public square. He published the "Gold Dollar," one of Austin's earliest Black newspapers, giving his community a voice in an age when that voice was hard-won. And he was politically active: in 1881 he urged Black voters to support Austin's bid to become home to the University of Texas — a campaign the city won. He died in 1898 and, according to the marker, is buried here in an unmarked grave.
Its place in the American story
Fontaine's life is a case study in how formerly enslaved Americans transformed emancipation from a legal fact into a living reality. Freedom on paper meant little without institutions to sustain it, and across the Reconstruction South, Black leaders built exactly those institutions — independent churches first of all, because a church was a place to worship, to organize, to educate, and to lead, all beyond white control.
The pattern he embodies played out in countless towns: a preacher gathers a congregation, the congregation multiplies, an association binds the churches together, and around this religious core grow newspapers and political engagement. That Fontaine did all of this — founding churches, launching a newspaper, and mobilizing voters — makes him a vivid local example of a national phenomenon.
His 1881 push for Black voters to back Austin's bid for the University of Texas is especially telling. Here was a man born into slavery, exercising the ballot and the press to help shape the future of a great public institution. It captures the promise of Reconstruction-era citizenship at its fullest — even as that promise faced fierce and growing opposition.
If you visit
This memorial stands in Austin, and part of what makes it moving is the detail on the marker itself: the man it honors lies here in an unmarked grave. Stand quietly for a moment and let that sink in — a founder of churches, a newspaper publisher, and a civic leader, resting without a headstone of his own until this memorial named him.
Come ready to look for continuity rather than ruins. The institutions Fontaine built — congregations and an association of churches — are the kind of legacy that lives in a community rather than a single monument, so let the marker send you thinking about the neighborhoods and churches that carry that history forward.
Most of all, read this one slowly. A life that ran from Arkansas slavery around 1808 to a Gilded Age deathbed in 1898 spans nearly the whole nineteenth-century Black American experience. Markers like this reward the visitor who pauses to trace that arc — from bondage, to the pulpit, to the printing press, to the ballot box.
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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