HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Wesley Chapel A.M.E. Church

Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas

Marker Inscription

This congregation was organized in 1869 by the Rev. Richard Robert Haywood, an early Texas missionary in the African Methodist Episcopal church. Trustees of the church bought land at this site in 1881, and worship services were held in a small wooden building until this sanctuary was constructed in 1904. Erected during the Rev. J.A. Jones' pastorate, the Carpenter Gothic style building features a corner tower and lancet windows. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1984

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

This congregation was organized in 1869 by the Rev. Richard Robert Haywood, an early Texas missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in the hopeful years just after emancipation. Trustees bought this land in 1881, and worshippers gathered in a small wooden building until the present sanctuary was raised in 1904. Its Carpenter Gothic form, with a corner tower and lancet windows, still marks a cornerstone of Georgetown's Black community.

Why it matters

It reflects the vital role independent Black churches played in building community, faith, and leadership after emancipation.

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Related people

  • Β· Rev. Richard Robert Haywood

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Macedonia Baptist Church

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Macedonia Baptist Church began in 1881 with worship under a brush arbor in Matilda Lewis's back yard, organized by nine families of Georgetown's African American community. Trustees soon secured this site for a frame sanctuary, replaced by a larger building in 1914, and the congregation joined the La Grange Baptist District Association in 1885. For well over a century it has anchored the spiritual and civic life of Black Georgetown.

Site of Marshall-Carver High School

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Georgetown's first school for African American children began early in the 20th century as β€œThe Colored School,” teaching grades one through eight. Principal S. C. Marshall pushed the board to add high school classes in 1913, and the growing school β€” later renamed for him and then for George Washington Carver β€” became the community's educational heart. In 1962 the parents of seventeen Carver students sued to force integration, a fight that carried to the Fifth Circuit and ended with the school's closing as Georgetown desegregated by 1967.

Jessie Daniel Ames

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Jessie Daniel Ames grew up in Georgetown and graduated from Southwestern University before widowhood turned her toward public life. She joined the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, led local women to register to vote for the first time in 1918, and became the first president of the Texas League of Women Voters. Moving into civil rights work, she founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching in 1930, rejecting the claim that lynching protected white women.

Negro Fine Arts School

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