Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church
Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
According to local tradition this site was used by area slaves for gathering purposes. Silvie Story, William Hill, Martha Young, Paulie Johnson, Grant McBride, and Martha J. Hill organized this church in 1864 with the help of the Rev. Joshua Brice. Early baptisms took place in the Colorado River. By 1900 the congregation consisted of about 20 members. The C. M. Rogers family deeded 9 acres to the church in the early 1900s. An educational facility was built in 1976 and a new sanctuary in 1988. The congregation continues to provide worship and educational services for the community. (1995)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Local tradition holds that enslaved people gathered at this site even before freedom, and in 1864 — as the Civil War drew to its close — a small group organized this Baptist church with the help of Rev. Joshua Brice, baptizing new members in the Colorado River. By 1900 the congregation numbered about twenty, and a family deeded it nine acres in the early 1900s. New buildings in 1976 and 1988 carried its worship and schooling into the present.
Why it matters
Founded in the last year of slavery, the church marks the very moment freedpeople began building the independent Black congregations that would anchor their communities for generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1864, the country was in the final, exhausted year of the Civil War, and Texas was still a place where slavery was law. Bastrop County sat on the Colorado River — the Texas Colorado, which winds down through the state's center — in cotton country worked by enslaved people whose lives were not their own.
Freedom had not yet come to Texas. It would arrive the following summer, in June 1865, when word of emancipation finally reached the state months after the war's larger turns. So the people who gathered at this site in 1864 did so while still enslaved, meeting on ground that local memory holds was already a place of quiet assembly.
That detail matters. Long before there was a building or a charter, there was a spot on the land where people came together — and out of that habit of gathering, a church was organized. It is a small window into how faith communities took root in the last shadow of bondage and the first light of what came after.
People & events
The founding is unusually well remembered for so small a beginning. A handful of people — Silvie Story, William Hill, Martha Young, Paulie Johnson, Grant McBride, and Martha J. Hill — organized the congregation in 1864, with the help of the Rev. Joshua Brice. Their names have carried across more than a century and a half, which is itself a kind of triumph for a community whose earliest records so often went unwritten.
The first baptisms happened in the Colorado River itself. Picture that: new members walking down to the water, the current doing the work that no font could, the whole congregation gathered on the bank. It was worship shaped by what the land provided.
Growth was slow and human-scaled. By 1900 the congregation counted only about twenty members — a number that speaks to how hard-won every year was. In the early 1900s the C. M. Rogers family deeded nine acres to the church, giving it something the founders never had: land of its own, a permanent home. Later generations added an educational facility in 1976 and a new sanctuary in 1988, each building a promise kept to the ones before.
Its place in the American story
After emancipation, one of the first things freedpeople across the South did was build their own churches. Under slavery, worship had been watched, restricted, and folded into the churches of enslavers. An independent Black congregation was therefore something more than a place to pray — it was a school, a meeting hall, a bank of mutual aid, and one of the only institutions a community could truly own and govern for itself.
This church stands at the very hinge of that story. Organized in 1864, it was taking shape in the last year of slavery, so that when freedom came the community already had a spiritual center to build on. Multiply this one congregation by the thousands that rose in the same years, and you have the backbone of Black American life for generations — the institution that outlasted every other.
That it still offers worship and schooling today is the quiet headline. Many such beginnings were lost. This one endured, carrying the names of its founders forward as a living thing rather than a memory.
If you visit
This is a working church and a piece of local memory rather than a grand monument, so come in that spirit. The historical marker tells a story that the buildings around it — the sanctuary from 1988, the educational hall from 1976 — quietly continue.
Let yourself think about the river. The Colorado runs through this county, and the earliest members of this congregation were baptized in its water. Standing near the church and imagining that scene does more to connect you to 1864 than any plaque can.
If you're threading together a day in Bastrop County, this makes a thoughtful stop between the bigger attractions — a reminder that some of the most important American history happened in small rooms, among ordinary people whose names, remarkably, we still know.
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
- · Joshua Brice
- · Silvie Story
- · William Hill
Themes & tags
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