Springhill Missionary Baptist Church
Kirbyville, Jasper County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Shortly after receiving news of their emancipation, former slaves organized Springhill Missionary Baptist Church in June 1865 with the help of Parson Bean, a white minister and friend of the community. Members built a log cabin for a church and school. Brother Peter Adams was the first Black pastor and brother Armstead Frazier was the first Black secretary around 1870. Trustees purchased 14.65 acres of land from M. A. Eddy for a church, cemetery and school around 1868. New church buildings were erected in 1942 and 1970 as the congregation grew. The church has served as a beacon in the community through its benevolent, cemetery and scholarship outreach programs.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In June 1865, only weeks after word of emancipation reached East Texas, freedpeople near Kirbyville gathered to found Springhill Missionary Baptist Church with the aid of a sympathetic white minister, Parson Bean. They raised a log cabin that doubled as church and school, elected their own Black pastor and secretary, and by the late 1860s had purchased their own land for worship, a cemetery, and education. New sanctuaries in 1942 and 1970 marked a congregation that endured for generations.
Why it matters
Churches like Springhill were among the first institutions freedpeople built for themselves after slavery, anchoring Black community life, literacy, and self-governance during Reconstruction and long after.
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Related people
- · Parson Bean
- · Peter Adams
- · Armstead Frazier
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of J.H. Rowe School
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Formal public schooling for African American students near Jasper began in 1875 at Cold Springs and moved to a Jasper campus in 1924, the same year James Hoff Rowe arrived as administrator. A graduate of Prairie View and Hampton Institute who had served as a dean at Prairie View, Rowe led the school to expanding scope and stature until his death in 1943. Renamed in his honor, the school served the community until integration closed it in 1968.
Dixie Freedom Colony
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After Emancipation in 1865, formerly enslaved African Americans across the South built their own independent "freedom colonies" where they could own land and govern their own community life. The Dixie colony near Bevilport grew from the 1853 founding of Dixie Missionary Baptist Church — built jointly by planter Joshua Seale and the man he enslaved, Richard "Uncle Dick" Seale. After the war, Richard Seale became a community leader, establishing the Dixie School so the colony's children could be educated. The church, school, and nearby Indian Creek Cemetery anchored a life organized around faith, learning, and self-reliance.
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Woodville's African American families long educated their children in churches and Masonic halls until educator Henry T. Scott, a Prairie View graduate, arrived as a teacher in 1910 and led the drive for a proper public school. The six-room school named for him opened on Elm Street in 1934, and under principal John K. Canada it grew from fewer than 100 students to more than 500, prompting a new campus in 1961. The school closed in the late 1960s with integration, and its main building burned in 1980, but an alumni association keeps its memory alive.
Stephen Alexander McBride
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Born into slavery in Texas in 1834, Stephen McBride helped found Shankleville after emancipation, buying land in northern Newton County with Jim Shankle to build a self-sustaining African-American community of homes, churches, and businesses. McBride himself ran a cotton gin, store, blacksmith shop, and several mills. His most lasting gift was McBride College, opened in 1883 by a man who could neither read nor write yet prized education above all for the young.