Pine Grove Missionary Baptist Church

Diboll vicinity, TX

Before bridges spanned the Neches, ferries were the vital links across East Texas rivers. I. D. Clark established this crossing in 1856, and after his death in 1859 his widow Ann kept it running with the labor of two enslaved people until her own death in 1863. The Clark family held the land for decades; a town called Clark's Station, or Miami, grew up at the crossing, with a community cemetery laid out nearby in 1860, until modern highways finally made the ferry obsolete.

Lufkin vicinity, TX

When the Houston East and West Texas Railroad reached Angelina County in 1882, a settlement called Bitterweed Flat grew up along the line. W. E. Hoshall bought land and timber rights in 1913 and began shipping logs from a switch there, and in 1917 Luke E. Wright built a sawmill and a company town — named Hoshall — complete with churches, schools, and a commissary, home to both Anglo and African American workers. When the mills closed, the town emptied, until by 1940 only a cemetery and a mill pond remained.

Lufkin, TX

Trustees of an Angelina County African American cemetery group bought this acre in 1905, though recorded burials reach back to 1901. First called Frost Cemetery, it became known as Stranger's Rest around 1915 for the many drifters laid to rest here, with the last recorded burial in 1946. After falling into neglect, it was reclaimed by community members and county volunteers in 1991–92.

Lufkin, TX

Completed in 1900 by self-taught Black architect Will Engram—who arrived in Lufkin with a third-grade education and went on to build some hundred homes—this wood-frame hall became the meeting place for North Lufkin's Black fraternal orders, from the Free Masons to the Eastern Stars and Heroines of Jericho. Slated for demolition in the 1970s, it was saved through the efforts of Engram's daughter and now houses a Black History room. It stands among the last turn-of-the-century buildings in the community.