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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In June 1865, freedom came late and all at once to Texas. Word that slavery had ended reached the state that month — the news announced at Galveston on June 19, a day remembered ever since as Juneteenth — and for the enslaved people of East Texas it changed everything overnight.
This was the dawn of Reconstruction, a raw and hopeful period when millions of newly freed Americans set about building lives of their own for the first time. In the countryside of Jasper County, in the Piney Woods near what is now Kirbyville, that work began almost immediately.
Among the very first things freedpeople did, here as across the South, was to gather and worship on their own terms. A church of their own was both a spiritual home and a declaration of independence — proof that they now belonged to themselves.
People & events
Only shortly after receiving the news of their emancipation, former slaves organized Springhill Missionary Baptist Church in June 1865. They were helped by Parson Bean, a white minister described as a friend of the community — a reminder that even in a divided time, individual acts of goodwill could matter.
The congregation built a log cabin to serve as both church and school, joining worship and learning under one roof. By around 1870 the community had chosen its own leaders: Brother Peter Adams as the first Black pastor, and Brother Armstead Frazier as the first Black secretary. Around 1868, trustees purchased 14.65 acres of land from M. A. Eddy for a church, a cemetery, and a school.
That land purchase was a profound step. People who only a few years earlier could be bought and sold now held property in common for the good of their community. As the congregation grew, it built new church buildings in 1942 and again in 1970, and over the generations it reached outward through benevolent work, its cemetery, and scholarship programs.
Its place in the American story
Springhill stands for one of the most important chapters in American history: the moment when freedpeople began building institutions of their own. Across the South after 1865, the Black church became the first and most enduring of those institutions — a place of worship, but also of schooling, self-government, and mutual aid.
The pairing of church and school here is especially telling. Under slavery, learning to read had often been forbidden; with freedom, education became one of the most fiercely pursued goals, and congregations frequently opened the first schools their communities ever had. To build a cabin that was both sanctuary and schoolhouse was to claim both faith and literacy at once.
And Springhill did not merely survive Reconstruction — it endured well beyond it, raising new buildings across the twentieth century. Its long life is a testament to the staying power of institutions that a community builds for itself, and to the way those first freedom-era churches anchored Black community life for generations.
If you visit
Come to a place like this with the calendar in mind. The congregation traces its founding to June 1865 — the very season freedom arrived in Texas — and standing on ground the community bought and built on so soon after emancipation gives the visit its weight.
The cemetery is worth quiet attention. It is part of the land the trustees secured in the late 1860s, and its graves hold the generations who kept this church alive from Reconstruction into modern times. A churchyard like this is a community's memory written in stone.
Springhill sits in the rural Piney Woods of Jasper County, near Kirbyville, and it rewards an unhurried stop on a drive through deep East Texas. Let it stand for the countless freedom-era churches that once began as a single log cabin — humble at the start, and yet among the most consequential buildings their communities ever raised.
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
- · Parson Bean
- · Peter Adams
- · Armstead Frazier
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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