Union Lee Baptist Church
Manor, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
According to oral tradition, this congregation began meeting together for outdoor worship services in 1874. In 1884, Leonard Eck donated land, the B. J. Lee family gave a building, and the church was formally organized with the Rev. Anthony Winn as pastor. In 1916, after several decades of growth, the congregation moved to this property, donated by M. M. and Josephine Mitchell and G. A. Mitchell. In 1928-1929, a Rosenwald school was built on the northwest corner of the church's acreage to serve students in this rural part of Travis County. Throughout its history, Union Lee Missionary Baptist Church has carried out ministries of education and community assistance and remains an important part of the area's cultural heritage. (2001)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Oral tradition traces this congregation to outdoor worship services begun in 1874, with the church formally organized in 1884 after Leonard Eck donated land and the B. J. Lee family gave a building. The congregation moved to its present property in 1916, and in 1928–1929 a Rosenwald school was built on the church's land to serve students in rural Travis County. Through education and community assistance, Union Lee Missionary Baptist Church has remained a cornerstone of the area.
Why it matters
The church and its Rosenwald school together tell how African American congregations in the rural South became the backbone of Black education when public schooling was segregated and underfunded.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after the Civil War, freedom for African Americans in the rural South was real but fragile, and it had to be built from almost nothing. In places like rural Travis County, Texas, Black families emerging from slavery gathered first for the things that could not be taken away: worship, fellowship, and the education of their children. The church came before the building; faith came before the walls.
The decades that followed — the Reconstruction and Gilded Age years, giving way to the Progressive Era — were a time of both growth and hardening barriers. As Black communities put down roots, the surrounding society was raising the machinery of segregation. Public services, and especially public schools, were split by race and starved of funds on the Black side of the line.
Into that gap stepped the Black church. Again and again across the rural South, the congregation became the community's true civic center — the place where land was pooled, teachers were found, and children learned their letters. A church was rarely just a church; it was a school, a meeting hall, and an anchor all at once.
People & events
Oral tradition — the memory a community keeps in its own voice — traces this congregation to 1874, when people first gathered for outdoor worship. There was no building yet, only the decision to come together under the open sky. That is how many enduring institutions begin: with commitment long before comfort.
The formal founding came in 1884, and it was a genuinely communal act. Leonard Eck donated the land. The B. J. Lee family gave a building. And the church was organized under its first pastor, the Rev. Anthony Winn. Each contribution mattered; a congregation that owned neither land nor structure now had both, and a leader to guide it.
Growth followed. In 1916, the congregation moved to its present property, donated by M. M. and Josephine Mitchell and G. A. Mitchell — another gift, another family investing in the church's future. Then, in 1928–1929, came a Rosenwald school, built on the northwest corner of the church's own acreage to serve the students of this rural part of Travis County. Church and school stood on the same ground, exactly as the community's priorities dictated.
Its place in the American story
The Rosenwald school on this church's land connects a small Texas congregation to one of the most remarkable education efforts in American history. In the early twentieth century, thousands of schools for Black children rose across the South through a partnership between Black communities and a philanthropic fund associated with the Rosenwald name — communities that raised money, gave land, and supplied labor to build the schools that public systems would not.
That this school sat on the church's own acreage is the whole story in miniature. Where segregated public schooling was underfunded or absent, the Black church supplied the ground, the will, and the gathering place. The congregation did not wait for the state to educate its children; it educated them itself.
This is how a great deal of Black education in the rural South actually happened — not handed down from above, but built from within, congregation by congregation. Union Lee Missionary Baptist Church, carrying on ministries of education and community assistance across its long history, stands for a national truth: that faith communities became the backbone of learning when the wider society refused the job.
If you visit
Come here understanding that you are looking at more than a church. This is ground where a rural community pooled what little it had — land, a building, labor, faith — and made something that has lasted well over a century. The quiet of the site belies how much determination is layered into it.
Look toward the northwest corner of the church's acreage, where the Rosenwald school once served local students. Even where a schoolhouse no longer stands as it did, knowing the spot lets you picture the children who walked there, and the community that decided their education could not wait. Let the two purposes of this place — worship and learning — sit together in your mind, because they sat together on this land.
This makes a meaningful stop on any trip through the history of rural Texas, especially for travelers tracing the story of African American communities and the schools they built for themselves. Approach it with respect; this is a living congregation and a place of continuing ministry, not a museum. A few reflective minutes here connect you to a chapter of American resolve that too often goes unseen from the highway.
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
- · Leonard Eck
- · Anthony Winn
Themes & tags
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