St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the early twentieth century, African American workers in the Pflugerville Cotton Industry were not allowed to buy property in town. In 1910, La Rue Noton, a farmer who owned around 1,200 acres west of Pflugerville, set aside an acre and sold lots to the workers for fifty dollars each. The settlement was recorded in county records as Pflugerville’s colored addition. In 1909, Reverend Square Roberts held church services under a brush arbor on the Fritz Pfluger Farm in the colored addition. A few months later, services were held in the schoolhouse. In January 1910, under Reverend Roberts’ leadership, a Baptist church was organized. In the first meeting, Sister Luella Henry suggested the name St. Mary Baptist Church and the motion carried. During the early years of the newly established church, many pastors led the congregation. In 1914, a lot was purchased that would house the first church building. The building was completed from 1914 to 1916. During Reverend Nelson’s tenure in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the building was moved from the back lot to the front. Due to an increase in attendance, the church was remodeled and expanded. With an active Sunday school program, organization of the Baptist training union and a diversity fellowship with other area churches, St. Mary Missionary Baptist church has forged ties in the community. From humble beginnings and twenty members, this church has grown to over 400 members and has been a beacon of light in the community for over a century.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the early 1900s African American workers in Pflugerville's cotton industry were barred from buying property in town, until farmer La Rue Noton sold them one-acre lots in what county records called the "colored addition." There, under a brush arbor and then a schoolhouse, Reverend Square Roberts led the 1910 organization of a Baptist church that Sister Luella Henry proposed naming St. Mary. From twenty founding members the congregation built its first sanctuary in the mid-1910s and has since grown into a community pillar of more than 400.
Why it matters
The church grew directly out of segregation's barriers, showing how Black Texans created lasting institutions of faith and community on the only land open to them.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · La Rue Noton
- · Square Roberts
- · Luella Henry
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Willow Ranch Negro School
Travis County, TX
Across the rural South and Southwest, Black communities educated their children in separate, unequal schoolhouses through the long decades of Jim Crow. A "Negro school" like this one in Travis County was often built and sustained by the very families it served, because the state provided so little to Black education. Small and plain, such buildings were nonetheless engines of literacy, faith, and community for African American families shut out of white classrooms.
Bethany Cemetery
Austin, TX
Bethany Cemetery was established in the late 1800s after burial space for African Americans in Austin's Oakwood Cemetery ran out, its oldest recorded grave that of an infant, Hellen Moore, in 1879. C. W. Jones bought the land in 1892, and the Bethany Cemetery Company—formed in 1893 by William Holland, Henderson Rollins, Allen Bradley, and William M. Tears—cared for it for decades. A community association took up its upkeep in 1976, and the graveyard still serves the area today.
John Elbridge Hines
Austin, TX
Born in South Carolina in 1910, John E. Hines came of age witnessing the social upheaval of the Great Depression and built a ministry devoted to social justice. Rising through the Episcopal Church, he moved to Austin as Bishop Coadjutor in 1945 and became Presiding Bishop of the national church in 1965, where he championed racial equality, women's participation, and aid to minority communities through his General Convention Special Program. He also helped lead the movement for corporate divestment that pressured the end of South African apartheid.
Jacob Fontaine
Austin, TX
Born into slavery around 1808, Jacob Fontaine came to Austin about 1850 as the enslaved property of an Episcopal minister. In 1864 he began preaching to fellow enslaved people and, after emancipation, founded the First Baptist Church, Colored, and roughly five other congregations along with a county association of Black Baptists. He published the "Gold Dollar," one of Austin's earliest Black newspapers, and campaigned to bring the University of Texas to the city.