Site of Samuel Huston College
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Samuel Huston College traces its history to 1876 when the Rev. George O. Richardson founded a college in Dallas for the education of African American youth. St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church was leased for the private school, named Andrews Normal School. The school moved to Austin in 1878 and held classes in the Wesley Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church. With the help of the Freedman’s Aid Society, adopted Andrews Normal School in 1878 and the name was changed to West Texas Conference School. Nearly six acres were acquired on East 12th Street in 1880 for the original campus. The school was renamed in 1887 for Samuel Huston of Marengo, Iowa, who donated property worth $10,000. Funding difficulties caused the school to close several times in the 1880s. t reopened in 1900 at the same site. Organized as a private educational corporation in 1910, it became a senior college in 1926, and merged with Tillotson College in 1952. Relocated to the Tillotson College campus on Chicon Street, the school was renamed Huston-Tillotson College. It continues a distinguished history of education. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Samuel Huston College grew from a school for African American youth founded by Rev. George O. Richardson in Dallas in 1876, which moved to Austin in 1878 and, with support from the Freedmen's Aid Society, acquired a campus on East 12th Street. Renamed in 1887 for an Iowa benefactor, it weathered repeated closures before reopening in 1900 and becoming a senior college in 1926. In 1952 it merged with Tillotson College to form Huston-Tillotson, which continues today.
Why it matters
The college is a cornerstone of African American higher education in Texas, part of the network of institutions that opened learning to freedpeople and their descendants.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Samuel Huston College was born in the hard, hopeful years that followed emancipation. When the Rev. George O. Richardson founded a school for African American youth in Dallas in 1876, the Civil War was barely a decade past, and a whole population freed from slavery was hungry for the education long denied to them by law. Across the South, churches and aid societies were rushing to meet that hunger, often in borrowed rooms and leased chapels.
That is exactly how this school began — in leased space at a Methodist Episcopal church, under the plain name Andrews Normal School. A "normal school" trained teachers, and teachers were the multiplying force of the age: each one could carry literacy to a classroom full of children. When the school moved to Austin in 1878 and held its early classes in a chapel, it was following the pattern of the era, growing wherever a congregation could shelter it.
Reconstruction was giving way to harder times for Black Americans, and institutions like this one had to survive on faith, donations, and stubbornness. The founding of Andrews Normal School in 1876 was the small, determined seed of something that would outlast every setback to come.
People & events
The story runs through a chain of hands and names. The Rev. George O. Richardson planted the school in Dallas in 1876, leasing St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church for classes. Two years later the school moved to Austin, meeting in the Wesley Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, and with the support of the Freedmen's Aid Society it was reorganized and renamed the West Texas Conference School — the Methodist Episcopal Church's regional body taking the young institution under its wing.
A permanent home came in 1880, when nearly six acres were acquired on East 12th Street for the first real campus. Then, in 1887, the school took the name it would carry longest, honoring Samuel Huston of Marengo, Iowa, whose gift of property worth ten thousand dollars was a lifeline. Money, though, remained the constant struggle: funding difficulties forced the school to close more than once during the 1880s before it reopened at the same site in 1900.
The twentieth century steadied it. Organized as a private educational corporation in 1910, it grew into a senior college by 1926. In 1952 it merged with Tillotson College, moved to the Tillotson campus on Chicon Street, and was renamed Huston-Tillotson College — the union of two histories into one continuing institution.
Its place in the American story
This college stands among the historically Black colleges and universities that reshaped American life after slavery. In a nation that had legally forbidden the enslaved to read, the founding of such schools was a quiet revolution — the claiming of education as a right and a route to full citizenship. The generous gift of an Iowa benefactor to a struggling Texas school also reflects the national reach of that effort, drawing support far from the campus itself.
The repeated closures and reopenings tell a national truth as clearly as any triumph would. These institutions survived on thin margins, sustained by churches, aid societies, and individual donors when public funding for Black education was scarce or hostile. That this one endured every closing and came back is part of a larger American story of persistence against the odds.
Its survival into the present, through the 1952 merger that created Huston-Tillotson, links a nineteenth-century teacher-training school to the broad network of colleges that educated generations of Black teachers, ministers, and professionals. Institutions like these built much of the leadership of Black America, and their graduates carried that education outward across the whole country.
If you visit
Come to this spot knowing you are standing where a beginning happened, not where the story ended. The college itself moved on — to the Tillotson campus after the 1952 merger — so what the marker offers is the memory of the original East 12th Street site and the long chain of effort that started here.
Let the sequence of names sink in as you read: Andrews Normal School, West Texas Conference School, Samuel Huston College, and finally Huston-Tillotson. Each name is a chapter, a reminder that institutions are built by many hands over many years, through closures and comebacks that nearly ended them.
This is a natural stop on any tour of Austin's African American heritage, and it pairs well with a visit to the living campus that carries the legacy forward today. Give yourself a moment of quiet respect here. Some places matter not for grand ruins but for the sheer fact that, against real hardship, something important was begun and kept alive.
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
- · George O. Richardson
- · Samuel Huston
Related events
- · Founding of Andrews Normal School (1876)
- · Merger into Huston-Tillotson College (1952)
Themes & tags
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