Wheeler Springs Community
Crockett, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(4.4. miles west) Settlement in this area began in 1835, when Joshua J. Hall (1790-1871) established a community south of here along the Trinity River. After the Civil War Hall family slaves and other freed African Americans settled here. In 1885 the community was named for springs located on land donated by French Taylor (1842-1937) for church purposes. A Baptist sanctuary and schoolhouse (1905) were built near the springs. In the 1920s a new school building was erected and a cannery began operations. The school closed in 1959 but the church and various civic organizations remain active. (1995)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlement here began in 1835 when Joshua J. Hall founded a community along the Trinity River. After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people from the Hall family and other freed African Americans put down roots in this area, building a community around springs on land donated by French Taylor. A Baptist church and schoolhouse rose near the springs in 1905, followed by a new school and a cannery in the 1920s; though the school closed in 1959, the church and civic life endured.
Why it matters
Wheeler Springs is a freedmen's community, part of the wave of settlements that African Americans built for themselves across the South after emancipation.
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Related people
- · Joshua J. Hall
- · French Taylor
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lula Demby Dailey
Crockett, TX
Born in the Wheeler Springs community in 1878, Lula Demby earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Prairie View College and came home to teach, becoming principal of the two-room, eight-grade Wheeler Springs School. She worked tirelessly to widen her students' opportunities and, beyond the classroom, helped her community build a canning kitchen, a garden, and a school cafeteria. She lived to ninety-eight and was buried in the family cemetery.
Cedar Branch Community School
Grapeland, TX
Schooling at Cedar Branch dates to at least 1888, and in 1895 the local church donated its old sanctuary to serve as a schoolhouse. By 1911 the settlement was its own common-school district, and a two-room school later rose on this site with help from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the philanthropy famous for financing schools for African-American children across the rural South. The school anchored the community until it consolidated with Grapeland in 1952.
Cedar Branch Community and Church
Houston County, TX
Cedar Branch grew from an extraordinary act at the close of slavery: a planter couple deeded parcels of their own cotton plantation to each of their former slaves, who built a community on the land. The freedmen organized a church in 1862 and raised a sanctuary in 1864, and by 1888 a school met in the church building—the church remaining the community's heart to this day.
Mary Allen Seminary
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In 1886 the Presbyterian Church's Board of Missions for Freedmen chose Crockett—for its large Black population and an existing parochial school—as the home of a new school for Black girls, named for Mary Allen, wife of the effort's leader. Growing into Mary Allen College under its first Black president, Dr. Byrd R. Smith, it became a coeducational, four-year liberal arts institution before legal and financial troubles forced its closing in 1972. For generations its twelve-building campus stood as a center of quality education in East Texas.