Pine Island Baptist Church
Hempstead, Waller County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized in the Hopewell schoolhouse, Aug. 13, 1888, with 13 members. Named for a small grove of pine trees nearby. This building erected in 1900.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Baptist congregation was organized in the Hopewell schoolhouse on August 13, 1888, beginning with just 13 members. It took its name from a small grove of pine trees nearby, and the present building was erected in 1900.
Why it matters
Small rural churches organized in shared schoolhouses were among the first permanent institutions binding together dispersed farm families in late-19th-century Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Groce Family Plantations
Hempstead vicinity, TX
Jared E. Groce arrived in Texas in 1822 among the earliest Anglo settlers, his wagon train hauling elaborate plantation equipment into a raw frontier. He and his heirs built a string of cotton plantations with grand names — Bernardo, Groce's Retreat, Liendo — along with an early gin and ferry. On the eve of the Battle of San Jacinto the family fed and ferried Sam Houston's army, a direct contribution to Texas independence.
In This Vicinity_Plantation of Charles Donoho
Hempstead, TX
In the tense weeks after the fall of the Alamo and Goliad, Sam Houston's Texas Army was in full retreat across the Brazos country during the so-called 'Runaway Scrape.' On April 14–15, 1836, the army camped near here on Charles Donoho's plantation before marching toward Harrisburg — the final maneuver that would end days later in the decisive victory at San Jacinto. This unassuming farmland briefly held the fate of an independent Texas.
Plantation Home of Edwin Waller 1800--1883
Hempsted, TX
Edwin Waller lived on this Hempstead-area property, acquired during the Republic, from 1846 for many years. His public life bracketed the era's great turning points: a member of the 1835 Consultation and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, he went on to serve as the first mayor of Austin. In 1861 he sat as a member of the Secession Convention, tying his long career to Texas's entry into the Civil War.
Shiloh Baptist Church
Waller County, TX
In September 1871, thirteen worshippers carrying letters of transfer from other congregations gathered at the nearby Kirby Chapel Methodist Church and organized themselves as Shiloh Baptist Church, aided by the Rev. Jesse Tubb and Deacon John M. McGinty. A decade later the young congregation raised its own building beside the Pond Creek School, and by the early 1900s counted about a hundred members. Successive sanctuaries followed — a 1908 building lost to a 1957 storm, then a third raised in 1958 — marking a rural Texas community's enduring faith through Reconstruction and beyond.