Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church
Matagorda County, Matagorda County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Following Emancipation in 1865, freedmen and women established the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church near Caney Creek in 1866. Instrumental in the church formation were the Reverend Dennis Grey (1814-1879), secretary John Alexander Sidney (1842-1928) and many charter members. The first church building was erected on land from the A.C. Buckner League purchased by the Reverend Mr. Gray and donated to the church. The building also served as a community school with an enrollment of about 100 pupils. A cemetery was established in the 1870s near the church and contains the graves of church and community members. A storm in 1909 destroyed the original church building, and a second church was constructed. A bell dating from 1856 given to the church by the community was hung in the belfry of the new church. In 1970 a new sanctuary was constructed on land donated by the Van Vleck School district. Auxiliary facilities were added as the congregation grew. Continuing a long history of service and community outreach, the church was a site of refuge during Hurricane Carla in 1961. The church remains an integral part of the area as it has for more than 130 years. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1866, only a year after Emancipation, formerly enslaved men and women near Caney Creek founded Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church—one of the first institutions Black Texans built for themselves in freedom. The Reverend Dennis Grey bought and donated the land, and the first building served as both church and a school of roughly a hundred pupils, with an 1856 bell later hung in its belfry. Through storms, rebuildings, and the terror of Hurricane Carla in 1961, when it sheltered neighbors, the church has anchored its community for well over a century.
Why it matters
Freedmen's churches were the bedrock of African American self-government, education, and mutual aid in the postwar South, and Shiloh's unbroken service embodies that legacy.
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Related people
- · Rev. Dennis Grey
- · John Alexander Sidney
Related events
- · Emancipation
- · Hurricane Carla
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church
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Freedpeople in the Cedar Lake community organized St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in 1867, in the first uncertain years after emancipation, meeting in log cabins and under a tent until land was donated in 1873. With building materials supplied by the Freedmen's Bureau, the congregation raised a permanent structure that doubled as the community's first school for Black children, and a portion of the land became a cemetery. More than a century and a half later the church still stands as a pillar of the community.
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