New Hope Baptist Church and St. Elmo Cemetery
Streetman, Freestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This locality was settled about 1849 by pioneers from Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. Cotton and corn plantations thrived. A school was opened in the 1850s, but closed during the Civil War (1861-65). A site on the centrally-situated Manning land grant became a public burial ground. Earliest documented grave is that of J. W. Darden, who died in 1869. The Little Hope Baptist Church was organized in the community in Aug. 1872, by a Freestone County missionary, the Rev. J. M. Gambrell, who served as the first pastor, with R. B. Anderson as church clerk. In 1875 a schoolhouse was built near the burial ground on the Manning grant. The school was called "St. Elmo", probably for a popular 19th century novel. The Baptist held services in the schoolhouse until 1886; then they adopted "New Hope" as the church name, bought a 6-acre tract that included the cemetery and school grounds, and built a church. Present sanctuary, which replaced that original building, was remodeled in 1954. St. Elmo Cemetery Association administers the affairs of the cemetery, which now (1974) contains about 850 graves.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Pioneers from Alabama, Florida, and Georgia settled this Freestone County locality around 1849, planting cotton and corn on land that soon held a school and a public burial ground. The Little Hope Baptist Church organized in 1872 under missionary J. M. Gambrell, worshipping in a schoolhouse dubbed "St. Elmo" after a popular novel of the day. In 1886 the congregation took the name New Hope and built its own church beside the cemetery, which today holds some eight hundred graves.
Why it matters
The intertwined church, school, and cemetery reveal how faith and education organized the antebellum settlement and postwar recovery of rural Central Texas.
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Related people
- · J. M. Gambrell
- · R. B. Anderson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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