Post Oak Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Easton, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
DURING RECONSTRUCTION, AFRICAN AMERICANS LIVING IN THE AREA FORMED COMMUNITIES AND CHURCHES. MANY OF THESE CHURCHES SERVED AS A HOUSE OF WORSHIP AND AS THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CENTER OF THE COMMUNITY. IN 1878, NEAR THE TOWN OF EASTON, A GROUP OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CHRISTIANS JOINED IN FELLOWSHIP TO FORM THE POST OAK COLORED METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. ORIGINAL FOUNDERS INCLUDED BROS. JEFF PORTLEY, JESSIE DANIELS, SR., AND DANIEL BRADFORD. THE FIRST MEMBER ON THE MEMBERSHIP ROLL WAS CHARLIE LUCAS FROM 1880. THE CONGREGATION FIRST ORGANIZED UNDER THE PASTORATE OF REVEREND M. BUTLER. OVER THE YEARS, THE CHURCH WAS GUIDED BY REVEREND ELI JOHNSON, REVEREND T. H. RANDALL AND REVEREND V. McCALISTER. A LOG CABIN SERVED AS THE FIRST PLACE OF WORSHIP UNTIL THE GROWTH IN MEMBERSHIP LED TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF A BUILDING BETWEEN 1896 AND 1899 MEASURING 14 BY 28 FEET. SEVERAL ACRES WERE PURCHASED FROM COUNTY JUDGE E. M. BRAMLETTE IN 1912. IN THE LATE 1930s AND EARLY 1940s, A NEWER FRAMED BUILDING WAS CONSTRUCTED. IN THE 1970s, COMMUNITY GROWTH ENABLED THE CHURCH TO BUILD A LARGER, MODERN BRICK STRUCTURE. THE CHURCH CHANGED ITS NAME IN MAY 1954 TO POST OAK CHRISTIAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. FROM ITS INCEPTION, CHURCH SERVICES WERE ONLY HELD ONCE A MONTH. BY THE 1960s, MEMBERS DESIRED TO MEET EVERY SUNDAY. THE POST OAK CHRISTIAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SERVES AS A REMINDER OF THE HISTORY AND HERITAGE OF A COMMUNITY AND CHURCH CREATED BY AFRICAN AMERICAN LANDOWNERS AND RESIDENTS OF EASTON AND GREGG COUNTY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1878, freedpeople near Easton gathered in fellowship to found the Post Oak Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, worshipping first in a humble log cabin. Like many Black churches born in Reconstruction, it served as far more than a sanctuary—it was the political and social heart of a community built by African American landowners. From a tiny frame building the congregation grew across the decades into a modern brick church, renamed Post Oak Christian Methodist Episcopal in 1954.
Why it matters
Founded by formerly enslaved families, the church embodies how independent Black congregations became the bedrock of self-governance, fellowship, and dignity in the Reconstruction South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years right after the Civil War, the countryside around Easton in Gregg County filled with the energy of people building lives they could finally call their own. Emancipation had ended bondage, but freedom still had to be made real—acre by acre, family by family—on the red-clay farmland of East Texas. Freedpeople bought land where they could, gathered kin and neighbors, and set about creating the institutions that a community needs to hold together.
Across the Reconstruction South, the very first of those institutions was almost always a church. A congregation gave scattered farm families a reason and a place to come together, and it did far more than host Sunday worship. Under their own roof and their own leadership, people organized schools, settled disputes, pooled money, and made the decisions that shaped daily life.
When this congregation formed in 1878, it belonged to a young denomination born of that same hunger for self-determination. Black Methodists in the South had organized their own church body earlier in the 1870s so that they could govern their own affairs, and small country churches like this one were the grassroots of that movement. The name it carried at its founding reflected the language of its era; the name it carries today, adopted in 1954, reflects how that same church chose to define itself for a new age.
People & events
The story begins with a handful of names the marker preserves on purpose. Brothers in faith Jeff Portley, Jessie Daniels, Sr., and Daniel Bradford were among the founders who joined in fellowship in 1878, and by 1880 Charlie Lucas had become the first name entered on the membership roll. Reverend M. Butler guided the congregation as it first organized, and over the decades a line of pastors—Reverend Eli Johnson, Reverend T. H. Randall, and Reverend V. McCalister—carried the work forward.
You can read the community's growth in its buildings. Worship began in a simple log cabin, the kind of structure a farming community could raise with its own hands. As more families joined, the congregation built a modest frame sanctuary between 1896 and 1899—just fourteen by twenty-eight feet, small enough to picture standing in a clearing. In 1912 the church bought several acres from a county judge, giving it land of its own to grow into.
That growth kept coming. A newer frame building rose in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and by the 1970s the congregation was large and settled enough to raise a modern brick church. Along the way, in 1954, the congregation adopted the name it uses today. Two smaller changes tell you a lot about a maturing community: for generations services were held only once a month, but by the 1960s the members wanted to gather every Sunday—and so they did.
Its place in the American story
The independent Black church is one of the great American stories, and this one is a clear window into it. When millions of formerly enslaved people gained their freedom, the churches they built for themselves became the first institutions they fully owned and fully led. In a South that was rapidly closing doors, the church was the one place where Black Americans set the agenda, chose their leaders, and spoke in their own voice.
That is why so many congregations founded in this era were far more than houses of worship. They were meeting halls, mutual-aid societies, and the seedbeds of schools and civic life—the political and social center of the community, as this marker plainly says. Behind each one stood people who had bought land and built stability where a generation earlier they had owned nothing at all.
Seen this way, a small country church near Easton belongs to a nationwide movement of self-governance and dignity. Its log cabin, its tiny frame building, and finally its brick sanctuary trace an arc that thousands of Black communities across the South followed—turning faith into the foundation of freedom.
If you visit
Come to this corner of Gregg County expecting the quiet of rural East Texas: piney woods, open farmland, and the kind of back roads where a church steeple is a landmark. The building you'll see is the modern brick structure, but let the marker slow you down long enough to imagine the log cabin and the little fourteen-by-twenty-eight-foot frame church that came before it.
The real thing to look for here is continuity. This is a congregation that has met on this land for well over a century, through four generations of buildings, and that longevity is the whole point. Read the founders' names slowly—these were neighbors and farmers who decided their community deserved a permanent place to gather.
If you're threading together a road trip through East Texas history, this marker pairs naturally with the region's other Reconstruction-era stories. It rewards the traveler who cares less about grand architecture and more about the human roots of a place—the ordinary people who built something lasting out of newly won freedom.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jeff Portley
- · Jessie Daniels, Sr.
- · Daniel Bradford
Themes & tags
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