Shiloh Baptist Church
White Oak, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
According to local tradition former slave Butcher Christian, and noted post-Civil War church organizer the Rev. John Baptist established this church in 1871. Services began in a log sanctuary located on 3 acres donated by Butcher Christian. A school for African Americans operated there until about the 1890s. An adjacent cemetery, with marked graves dating to 1882, is still active. revenues from oil discovered on church land were used to build a new sanctuary here in 1936. Shiloh Baptist serves the community with a variety of programs.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1871, Shiloh Baptist Church grew from the efforts of a formerly enslaved man, Butcher Christian, who donated the land, and the church organizer Rev. John Baptist. Its first sanctuary was a log building, and for a time an adjacent school taught African American children in the Reconstruction-era community. When oil was later discovered on church land, the revenue funded a new sanctuary in 1936, and the congregation endures today.
Why it matters
The church testifies to how freedpeople built enduring institutions of faith, education, and community in the generation after slavery.
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Related people
- · Butcher Christian
- · Rev. John Baptist
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Shiloh School
White Oak, TX
Soon after the Civil War, the newly freed African Americans of the Shiloh community built a one-room school for their children, later holding classes in the Shiloh Baptist Church. With help from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, they raised a new two-room schoolhouse in 1920, replaced by a brick building in the 1930s. The school served the community until desegregation closed it in 1966; its graduates went on to contribute across Texas and the nation.
New Hope Missionary Baptist Church
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In 1893, members of a nearby congregation moved into downtown Gladewater seeking work and founded New Hope under a brush arbor, led by Reverend Louis Holoway and seven others. Like countless Black churches born after emancipation, it became far more than a house of worship—the first school for African American children in Gladewater met within its walls. Rebuilt and expanded across the 20th century, it has anchored its community for well over a century.
Longview Womack High School
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Opened in 1930 on Gum Street as the Longview Negro High School, this campus gave African American students a secondary education in the era of legal segregation. Rebuilt after a 1946 fire and later renamed for beloved teacher Mary C. Womack, it produced graduates guided by principals honored in the East Texas Black Educators Hall of Fame. A federal desegregation order finally closed and razed the school.
Gilgal Baptist Church
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Founded in 1865 as the Civil War ended, this Black Baptist congregation began under a brush arbor and took the biblical name "Gilgal," the Israelites' first camp in the Promised Land — a fitting choice for a people newly freed. Over the following decades its members raised a frame church, ran a Black school on donated land, and, under Rev. W. L. Dickson, opened the Dickson Colored Orphans Home. The brick-veneered sanctuary and educational annex trace a congregation that steadily built institutions of faith, learning, and care.