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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church was born out of the hard realities of the early twentieth-century South, in the cotton country around Pflugerville, near Austin. This was the era of Jim Crow, when segregation shaped nearly every corner of daily life — including, brutally and explicitly, where a person was allowed to own land.
African American workers were essential to the local cotton industry, yet they were barred from buying property in town. That single fact tells you much about the world these families lived in: their labor was welcome, their permanence was not. To put down roots, to own a home, to build a church — the ordinary foundations of community life — they would have to find another way.
That way came in 1910, when a landowning farmer named La Rue Noton set aside an acre of his roughly 1,200 acres west of Pflugerville and sold lots to the workers for fifty dollars each. Recorded in county records as Pflugerville's "colored addition," it was a small piece of ground where Black families could finally own something of their own — and where, almost immediately, they began to build a church.
People & events
The congregation's roots reach back to 1909, when Reverend Square Roberts held services under a brush arbor on the Fritz Pfluger Farm in the colored addition — worship beneath a simple shelter of branches, the humblest of beginnings. A few months later, services moved into the schoolhouse.
In January 1910, under Reverend Roberts's leadership, the worshippers formally organized a Baptist church. In that first meeting, Sister Luella Henry rose to suggest a name — St. Mary Baptist Church — and the motion carried. It is a small, human moment worth pausing on: a congregation naming itself into being, a woman's voice giving the church its identity at the very first gathering.
The early years brought many pastors and steady growth. In 1914 the congregation purchased a lot for its first building, completed between 1914 and 1916. Later, during Reverend Nelson's tenure in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the building was moved from the back lot to the front, then remodeled and expanded to hold a growing crowd. With an active Sunday school, a Baptist training union, and fellowship with other area churches, St. Mary grew from twenty founding members into a congregation of more than 400 — a beacon in its community for over a century.
Its place in the American story
The story of St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church is, in miniature, the story of the Black church in America. Across the country, in the face of segregation and exclusion, African American communities built churches that became far more than places of worship — they were the anchors of community life, centers of mutual support, learning, leadership, and dignity when the wider society offered little of any.
What makes this church's origin so telling is that it grew directly out of the barriers meant to hold its founders back. Denied the right to buy property in town, these families created their own settlement and, at its heart, their own church — turning an act of exclusion into an act of self-determination. The "colored addition" recorded in the county books became sacred ground.
That a congregation begun by twenty people under a brush arbor now numbers in the hundreds, more than a century on, speaks to the endurance of these institutions. The Black church helped generations of Americans survive segregation and, in time, helped fuel the long movement for civil rights. St. Mary is one thread in that vast and vital national fabric.
If you visit
Come to St. Mary with the church's beginnings in mind, and the ordinary building takes on real depth. Picture the first worshippers gathered under a brush arbor, then in a schoolhouse, long before there was any sanctuary at all — and consider how far a congregation traveled to arrive at the church you see today.
Remember, too, that the building itself has literally moved and grown: shifted from the back lot to the front and expanded as attendance rose. A church that has been carried and enlarged to keep pace with its people carries that history in its very walls.
As a stop on a drive through the countryside around Pflugerville and greater Austin, St. Mary offers a quiet but powerful lesson in how communities are made. This is a living congregation, so visit with respect for the worship and fellowship that continue here. Let it stand in your mind for the countless small churches that African American communities built, against the odds, and sustained for generations.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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.
Downs Field
Austin, TX
This ground has been a home for African American athletics for more than a century—donated to Samuel Huston College in 1914 and used for baseball by the late 1920s, including the semi-pro Austin Black Senators of the Negro Leagues. As L.C. Anderson High's football field, it saw a 1942 state championship and the play of future Pro Football Hall of Famer Dick Night Train Lane. Relocated here in 1954, Downs Field was named for Rev. Karl Downs and remains the home field of Huston-Tillotson University.