Pleasant Hill Baptist Church
Hallsville, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Within a few months of the 1865 notification of the Emancipation Proclamation, former slave families began to settle in the area later known as the Pleasant Hill community. Led by Brother Ned Jacobs, several community members held prayer meetings in private homes. In 1871 the Pleasant Hill baptist Church was established under a brush arbor with the Rev. George Pritchett as pastor. In the absence of other public gathering places, the church became a focal point for community pursuits such as reading and writing lessons and economic and political meetings, as well as the church's own gatherings. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Within months of learning of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, newly freed families began settling this Harrison County community. Led by Brother Ned Jacobs, they held prayer meetings in one another's homes, and in 1871 formally organized Pleasant Hill Baptist Church under a brush arbor with the Rev. George Pritchett as pastor. With no other public gathering place, the church doubled as a schoolhouse for reading and writing lessons and a hall for economic and political meetings.
Why it matters
For African Americans emerging from slavery, the Black church was the cornerstone of freedom — at once sanctuary, schoolhouse, and civic forum where a free community organized its own future.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ned Jacobs
- · Rev. George Pritchett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Red Oak Missionary Baptist Church
Longview, TX
In 1875, a decade after emancipation, freed African Americans south of Longview organized Red Oak Grove Baptist Church on land donated by Sallie Rollins, with Rev. Rube Wright as their first pastor. The congregation later moved to its present site and dropped 'grove' from its name, all the while investing in education through ties to Butler College in Tyler and student scholarships. Its mission work has shaped the surrounding community for nearly a century and a half.
Wiley College Cemetery
Marshall, TX
The Methodist Episcopal Church's Freedmen's Aid Society founded Wiley College in Marshall in 1873 to educate former slaves and their descendants, and set aside four acres of its grounds as a burial place for the Black community. The earliest documented graves date to 1894, and those laid to rest include longtime college president Matthew Dogan, respected teachers, and veterans of the Civil War through the Korean War. Many graves remain unmarked, and a cemetery club has tended the grounds since 1959.
Pleasant Green Baptist Church
Longview, TX
After emancipation, freedpeople established the community of Pleasant Green, and in December 1871 pastors Henry Moses and Charles Anderson helped local residents organize a Baptist congregation, with the Rev. Henry Mass as its first pastor. From a small farm the church moved to this site in 1884 on land deeded by Simon and Mealy Claiborn, raising a frame sanctuary and later a larger house of worship. It remains a center of the historic African American community.
H. B. Pemberton
Marshall, TX
Henry Bertram Pemberton, born in 1867, became the first college graduate of Wiley College in Marshall and devoted his life to Black education in a segregated Texas. Named principal of the Colored School in 1894 and given permission but no money for a new building, he borrowed on his own credit to raise a two-story schoolhouse that his community repaid. Over decades he expanded Marshall's Black schools, recruited qualified teachers, and helped charter the local NAACP; in 1940 thousands of petitioners had the high school he founded renamed in his honor.