Saint Mark C. M. E. Church
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First known as St. Mark Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, this congregation was organized by former slaves about 1867. Worship services were held in a brush arbor built at the present site of Magrill Park. The Rev. Robert A. Hagler served as first pastor, and under his leadership a two-story sanctuary was built in 1876-77. It was replaced by a new frame building in 1893. In 1954 the church name was changed to St. Mark Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. this site was acquired in 1972. Descendants of founding members still attend the church.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized around 1867 by former slaves, St. Mark began worship in a brush arbor at what is now Magrill Park, with Rev. Robert A. Hagler as its first pastor. The congregation raised a two-story sanctuary in 1876-77, replaced it in 1893, and later took the name Christian Methodist Episcopal. Descendants of those founding members still fill its pews today.
Why it matters
St. Mark reflects the birth of independent Black Methodist denominations after the Civil War, as freedpeople left white-controlled churches to worship on their own terms.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years right after the Civil War, the South was remade almost overnight for four million people who had been enslaved. Emancipation brought a rush of new freedoms, and among the first things freedpeople claimed for themselves was the right to worship on their own terms, in churches they owned and led rather than in the segregated galleries of white congregations.
This was the era of Reconstruction, a fragile and hopeful time when Black communities across the South organized churches, schools, and mutual-aid societies at remarkable speed. The church was usually first — it was sanctuary, meeting hall, school, and the beating heart of community life all at once.
Often the very first services happened outdoors, under a 'brush arbor' — a simple open-air shelter of posts and leafy branches thrown up to shade a congregation that had a faith and a fellowship but not yet a building. From those humble arbors grew some of the most enduring institutions in African American life.
People & events
St. Mark began exactly this way. About 1867 a congregation of former slaves organized themselves and gathered for worship in a brush arbor on the site that is now Magrill Park. Their first pastor, the Rev. Robert A. Hagler, led them through those earliest days.
Under Hagler's leadership the congregation moved from branches to permanent walls, raising a two-story sanctuary in 1876-77. That building served for a generation before a new frame church replaced it in 1893 — the ordinary, hard-won cycle of a growing congregation outgrowing what it had first managed to build.
The church's name changed with the times. Founded as St. Mark Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, it became St. Mark Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in 1954. The present site was acquired in 1972, and the deepest testament to the founders is simply this: their descendants still worship here, an unbroken line stretching back to that brush arbor.
Its place in the American story
St. Mark reflects one of the quiet revolutions of American history — the rise of independent Black churches after emancipation. The denomination it belongs to grew out of that very impulse: Black Methodists in the South forming their own governing body in 1870 so that freedpeople could lead and shape their own religious lives, a body that took the name Christian Methodist Episcopal in 1954.
Across the nation, congregations like this one did far more than hold Sunday services. They were where people learned to read, where leaders were trained, where communities pooled money and courage. In a time when so many doors were closed to Black Americans, the church was the one institution they fully owned and controlled.
That a single congregation can trace itself from a brush arbor in 1867 to a living church today is a piece of national significance in miniature. It shows how the freedoms won in Reconstruction, however battered in the decades that followed, were kept alive generation after generation inside institutions the community built for itself.
If you visit
Remember that St. Mark is a living, active congregation, not a museum — descendants of the founding members still attend. Approach it with the respect you'd give any working house of worship, and if you'd like to see more than the exterior, a Sunday service or a courteous inquiry is the right way in.
Nearby Magrill Park is worth a thought, too, because that is where it all began: the ground where a brush arbor once stood before there was any building at all. Standing there, you can bridge the whole arc of the story in your mind, from open-air worship to the established church down the way.
It is a rewarding stop for anyone interested in the African American history of East Texas. What you're really visiting is continuity — a community that has kept faith, quite literally, in the same place across more than a century and a half.
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
- · Robert A. Hagler
Themes & tags
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