Preachers Hill
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Known to its residents as Preachers Hill and named when Bethel Temple Church was founded in 1920, this African American neighborhood was established near Longview's original townsite in the 1880s. Ella Jacob Cotton Loyd (1870-1957) came to Texas with planters William Cunyus and the Prothro family and settled in Longview. Family legend states that Ella built the home at 219 Clark Street in 1889 and became the matriarch of the neighborhood of around thirty families. Open fields were used for farming and a nearby creek provided fresh water. A commercial and social center emerged along with strong religious associations. Many local pastors, male and female, lived in the area. (2015)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established near Longview's original townsite in the 1880s, this African American neighborhood took the name Preachers Hill when Bethel Temple Church was founded in 1920, reflecting the many pastors — women as well as men — who lived there. Family tradition holds that Ella Jacob Cotton Loyd built her home on Clark Street in 1889 and became matriarch of a community of about thirty families. Open fields, a nearby creek, and a cluster of churches and businesses made the hill a self-sustaining center of Black life in East Texas.
Why it matters
Preachers Hill preserves the story of the self-reliant Black communities that took root across the post-Reconstruction South, anchored by faith and family.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after Reconstruction, Black Texans built communities of their own — often on the edges of established towns, on land they could acquire and hold, where they could raise families, worship, and make a living on their own terms. Preachers Hill, established near Longview's original townsite in the 1880s, was one of these.
Gregg County lay in the piney woods and cotton country of East Texas, a region where African American life after slavery meant carving out independence in a world that offered little help and much resistance. A neighborhood with its own farm fields, its own water source, and its own churches was more than convenient — it was a measure of self-reliance in an era when that self-reliance had to be won and defended.
By the time Bethel Temple Church was founded in 1920 and gave the hill its name, the community had already been growing for a generation. Spanning the late nineteenth century into the modern era, Preachers Hill reflects the whole arc of how Black neighborhoods took root and endured across the post-Reconstruction South.
People & events
At the heart of the neighborhood's story is Ella Jacob Cotton Loyd, who lived from 1870 to 1957. She came to Texas in the company of planters — the Cunyus and Prothro families — and settled in Longview, part of the movement of people who reshaped their lives in the decades after slavery.
Family legend holds that in 1889 Ella built the home at 219 Clark Street and became the matriarch of the neighborhood, a community of around thirty families. That role — matriarch — says a great deal about how such places held together: through respected figures who anchored the community and gave it continuity across generations.
The name Preachers Hill came in 1920, with the founding of Bethel Temple Church, and it captured something true about the place. Many local pastors lived here — and notably, women as well as men, at a time when women's leadership in the church was far from universally recognized. Around the homes and churches, open fields were farmed and a nearby creek supplied fresh water, while a commercial and social center grew up to serve daily life.
Its place in the American story
Preachers Hill stands for a pattern repeated in countless towns across the South after Reconstruction: African American communities that, denied full participation in the wider society, built dense, self-sustaining worlds of their own, anchored by faith and family. These neighborhoods were where Black institutions — churches, businesses, mutual aid — took shape and survived.
The prominence of preachers here points to the central role the church played in Black American life. It was far more than a place of worship; it was a school, a meeting hall, a source of leadership, and often the beating heart of the community's political and social life. That women as well as men served as pastors here is a detail worth holding onto, a reminder that Black congregations sometimes made room for women's leadership well ahead of the broader culture.
And at the center of it all stands a figure like Ella Loyd — a woman who built a house, raised a community around it, and became its matriarch. The story of America is full of such founders whose names never reached the history books but whose work built the neighborhoods that raised generations.
If you visit
Preachers Hill is a neighborhood, not a monument, so come ready to read a place rather than tour an attraction. Stand near Longview's original townsite and picture the hill in its earlier days: homes among open fields, a creek nearby, churches and small businesses giving the community its rhythm.
The marker invites you to imagine the layers of life here — the farm plots, the fresh-water creek, the commercial and social center, and above all the many churches that gave the hill its name. Think of the pastors, women and men alike, who lived within walking distance of one another and gave the neighborhood its identity.
It fits well into a thoughtful drive through East Texas history, a region rich with the story of how Black communities took root and thrived after Reconstruction. Take a moment to honor a founder like Ella Loyd, whose home and leadership set this place in motion, and consider how a hill named for its preachers still carries their memory more than a century on.
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
- · Ella Jacob Cotton Loyd
Themes & tags
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