St. Stephen's Baptist Church
Clarendon, Donley County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Following the relocation of Clarendon along the railroad in 1887, the African American population began to grow. By the 1890s, African Americans were searching for their own place of worship in the growing community. For a time, they gathered in private homes or met under a shade tree to read bible verses. While riding the combination train into Clarendon, a young African American cowboy, Matthew “Bones” Hooks (1867-1951), met Reverend Sid Stephens and persuaded him to help organize a church for the African American population. A location was found in an empty shelter in 1897 and Rev. Stephens gave the new church his name and stayed on as pastor. Bones Hooks also remained in Clarendon and helped build St. Stephens before he married and moved to Amarillo. Pastors included Rev. Stephens, Rev. L.G. Farley and Rev. A.G. Monagram. In May 1918, the church building was destroyed by a massive flood. However, under the leadership of Rev. Pickford, the congregation found a new location and in spite of declining membership, the church remained strong. In 1930, Rev. J.J. Hayden organized the first choir who sang at church services and performed for the public on special occasions. In the 1940s, a building was moved from Lelia Lake to Clarendon to be used by St. Stephens. During the next thirty years, the congregation held many fundraisers to support the church and celebrate its heritage. The old schoolhouse was purchased for the pastor’s home and a baptistery was added to the church. As the first African American church in the panhandle, St. Stephens Baptist Church has survived for more than a century due to the determination of the congregation and community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As Clarendon shifted to meet the railroad in the late 1880s, its growing African American community sought a church of its own, worshipping in homes and under shade trees until a young cowboy, Matthew "Bones" Hooks, helped bring a preacher to town. Founded in 1897 and named for that minister, Rev. Sid Stephens, the church survived a devastating 1918 flood, relocations, and lean years to remain a cornerstone of Black life in the Texas Panhandle.
Why it matters
As the first African American church in the Panhandle, St. Stephen's testifies to the faith and determination that built Black community institutions across the segregated West.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1887 the town of Clarendon picked up and moved to meet the railroad — the kind of relocation that reshaped countless communities in the late nineteenth-century West, where a town's future depended entirely on the tracks. As Clarendon grew in its new location on the high plains of the Texas Panhandle, its African American population grew with it.
This was the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era giving way to a new century, and it was also the era of hardening segregation. Black families building new lives in a frontier town did so within tight social limits, which made an institution of their own — a church — not just a spiritual need but a foundation for community life, mutual support, and dignity.
The Panhandle itself was still open cattle country, a place of cowboys, long drives, and hard, independent work. Into that world the earliest Black congregants brought their faith, worshipping wherever they could until they could claim a building of their own.
People & events
By the 1890s, Clarendon's African American residents were looking for a place to worship together. For a time they gathered in private homes or met under a shade tree to read scripture — faith kept alive without a roof over it.
The turning point came aboard a train. A young Black cowboy named Matthew "Bones" Hooks (1867–1951), riding the combination train into Clarendon, fell into conversation with Reverend Sid Stephens and persuaded him to help organize a church for the community. In 1897 a location was found in an empty shelter, Reverend Stephens gave the new congregation his own name and stayed on as its pastor, and Bones Hooks himself helped build St. Stephen's before he married and moved on to Amarillo.
The church weathered hard trials. In May 1918 a massive flood destroyed the building, but under Reverend Pickford the congregation found a new home and carried on. In 1930 Reverend J. J. Hayden organized its first choir, whose voices served both the services and the wider public on special occasions. In the 1940s a building was moved in from nearby Lelia Lake, an old schoolhouse became the pastor's home, and a baptistery was added — each step paid for by a congregation that kept raising funds to sustain and celebrate its heritage. Reverends Stephens, Farley, Monagram, Pickford, and Hayden are among those who guided it along the way.
Its place in the American story
St. Stephen's is remembered as the first African American church in the Texas Panhandle, and that distinction carries real weight. Across the segregated South and West, the Black church was the central institution of community life — house of worship, meeting hall, school, and mutual-aid society all at once. To found one on the frontier was to plant a cornerstone that everything else could build upon.
The congregation's survival through a devastating flood, repeated relocations, and lean years of declining membership is a story that echoes far beyond Clarendon. Black congregations everywhere held on through disasters and hardship because the church was too vital to lose; its endurance was itself a form of resistance and self-determination.
There's also the quiet significance of Bones Hooks, a Black cowboy whose chance conversation on a train helped bring a church into being. His life is a reminder that African Americans were present and active in the cattle country of the American West — not at its margins but woven into its history — and that the institutions they built have outlasted more than a century of change.
If you visit
Come to St. Stephen's with the long view in mind. More than a century of a congregation's determination is folded into this place, and knowing the story changes how you see it — a church that began under a shade tree and in an empty shelter, then held together through flood and relocation.
Let the details speak. A baptistery, a pastor's home once used as a schoolhouse, a building relocated from Lelia Lake — this is a church assembled and reassembled by hands that refused to let it fail. Consider the choir tradition begun in 1930, and imagine those voices carrying through services and community gatherings alike.
Approach any active house of worship respectfully, mindful that it remains a living congregation, not a museum piece. Set within the wide, open country of the Texas Panhandle, it makes a meaningful stop for travelers interested in the region's African American history and the frontier cowboy world that a young Bones Hooks once rode through on his way into town.
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
- · Matthew "Bones" Hooks
- · Sid Stephens
Themes & tags
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