Joshua Houston
Huntsville, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(c. 1822-January 8, 1902) Born a slave and reared on the Alabama plantation of the Lea family, Joshua Houston was brought to Texas in 1840 by Margaret Lea and Sam Houston. During the years after the Civil War, he became a prominent businessman and respected community leader. He served as a Huntsville city alderman, Walker County commissioner and delegate to the Republican National Convention. Houston was a devoted supporter of education for African Americans. Married three times, he was the father of eight children. At his death he was interred near General Sam Houston. RECORDED-2000
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born into slavery in Alabama and brought to Texas in 1840 in the household of Sam and Margaret Houston, Joshua Houston rose after emancipation into one of Walker County's most respected leaders. He built businesses and won public trust as a Huntsville alderman, county commissioner, and delegate to the Republican National Convention. A steadfast champion of Black education, he was buried near the general whose household he had once served.
Why it matters
His life traces the arc from bondage to citizenship and public leadership that defined Black Texans' fight to claim the promise of Reconstruction.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Joshua Houston
- · Sam Houston
- · Margaret Lea Houston
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Missionary Baptist Church
Huntsville, TX
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.
Rogersville
Huntsville, TX
Rogersville is Huntsville's oldest African-American neighborhood, born when former mayor Micajah Rogers began selling tracts to freed people in 1866 — among the buyers, Sam Houston's former body servant Joshua Houston. Freedpeople here built homes, churches, and businesses from blacksmith shops to cafes, and turned their churches into schools when public ones were denied. It became the heart of Huntsville's Black community and the home of its annual Juneteenth celebration.
George Washington Grant and Grant's Colony
Huntsville, TX
An Alabama native who came to Texas in 1831, George Washington Grant built a sprawling enterprise of stagecoaches, sawmills, and nearly 10,000 acres around Huntsville, and helped found Sam Houston Normal Institute and served as sheriff and county judge during Reconstruction. Though he had held people in slavery before the war, after Emancipation he sold and donated land to freedmen and, with the Quakers and the Freedmen's Bureau, created the community he called Harmony Settlement—better known as Grant's Colony—complete with farmhouses, a cotton gin, and a school open to children of any race.
Sam Houston Industrial and Training School
Huntsville, TX
Born in Huntsville in 1864 to enslaved parents, Samuel W. Houston earned degrees from Hampton, Atlanta University, and Howard before returning home to build schools for African American children in an era when the state funneled only Black-paid taxes toward their education. Around 1906 he opened classes in the rented Galilee Methodist Church, and the Sam Houston Industrial and Training School grew to serve hundreds of students statewide with vocational and academic programs. Merged into the Huntsville school system by 1930, it became Sam Houston High School and endured until integration in 1968.