Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church
Waco, McLennan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized in October 1886 for the African-American community in the rural area southeast of Waco, this congregation held services under a brush arbor across the street from this site until a permanent building was erected. The Rev. Ural Crain, an Anglo minister from a nearby Baptist church, led the members for a year, until they called their first African-American pastor, the Rev. Ben Crain. Throughout its history, the Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church has developed programs of music, mission and community outreach. It remains a focal point for the community and a part of the heritage of this area of McLennan County. (2002)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in October 1886 for the African-American community southeast of Waco, this congregation first worshiped under a brush arbor across the street from the marker site. An Anglo Baptist minister, the Rev. Ural Crain, led the members for a year until they called their first African-American pastor, the Rev. Ben Crain. Through music, missions, and outreach it has remained a focal point of the surrounding McLennan County community.
Why it matters
Founded barely two decades after emancipation, the church is a living institution of the African-American communities that built independent religious and social life across the postwar rural South.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ben Crain
- · Ural Crain
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wesley United Methodist Church
Waco, TX
Founded in 1902 as the East Side Mission by the Rev. B.J. Goff, this Methodist congregation first met in a storefront and an old county school building before settling into Jones Chapel on Paul Quinn Street in 1911. In 1961 it moved a half-mile south to its present home, a brick sanctuary with an open-concept basement and a balcony. Wesley United Methodist has served east Waco for more than a century.
Toliver Chapel Baptist Church
Waco, TX
This congregation grew from a Sunday school class led by the Rev. I. Toliver, a respected Baptist minister and civic leader in Waco's African American community, who organized the church in his own name in 1895. After buying land in east Waco, the congregation built a sanctuary near the interurban rail line and grew to more than 1,100 members by the early 1940s. A new church rose on this site in 1948, and the congregation continues its outreach and youth work today.
Willow Grove Community Cemetery
Willow Grove, TX
Willow Grove was founded in 1871 by William "Buck" Manning and A.W. Crawford, both formerly enslaved men who moved here with their families after emancipation. Each donated an acre for a Baptist church and this cemetery, where burials began in 1880. Generations of the founding families rest here, alongside veterans reaching back to World War I, and since 1935 a community association has faithfully tended the grounds.
Bull Hill Cemetery
Cedar Springs vicinity, TX
One of the oldest cemeteries in Falls County, Bull Hill served for more than a century as a burial ground for African Americans, first for people enslaved on Churchill Jones's vast plantation and later for the freedpeople of the China Grove community. After emancipation, families such as the Baileys, Currys, and Taylors built a church, a school, and a vibrant freedmen's settlement, with some acquiring land and starting businesses. Archaeology and oral history have since confirmed more than 100 burials at this hallowed site, where the last interment took place in 1961.