Zion Hill Baptist Church Cemetery
Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Rev. Lawson Reed came to Nacogdoches in 1878 to find no organized Baptist church serving the black community. For a time, he attended the Union Church with other Baptists as well as Presbyterians and Methodists, sometimes leading services there. The Rev. Mr. Reed prevailed upon local Baptists to organize their own church, and in 1879 they began to meet under a brush arbor. Frank and Ellen Walton, Annie K. McClain, Jim and Annie Rigsby, Harriet Moore, Hattoe Vaughns, Velma Williams McCullough and the Reeds were the charter members of the church. The approach of winter forced them to seek other accommodations, and the Waltons gave two acres of land for a building. Though the presence of the church and a number of unmarked and undated graves suggest earlier interments at this site, the earliest marked grave is that of Julia Harris, who died on February 8, 1897. Hers is the only marked grave dating from the 19th century. The Zion Hill Baptist Church grew steadily from its inception and by the 1890s the congregation required a larger structure. Early members continued to be buried on this site until the burial of Charley Blakey in 1945. Among those buried here are the Rev. Lawson Reed (d. 1924), whose grave is marked by two stones; John B. Liggins (d. 1919), Amiel Rivers (d. 1932), and Jim Smith (d. 1938), who served in World War I. There are several markers denoting members of fraternal organizations. Over time, the cemetery fell into disrepair. In the early 1970s a movement began to have the city assume custodianship of the cemetery. The burial ground remains a chronicle of the African American pioneers of Nacogdoches. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Rev. Lawson Reed reached Nacogdoches in 1878, he found no organized Baptist church for the Black community, so in 1879 charter members began worshiping under a brush arbor before the Walton family donated land. The cemetery's earliest marked grave dates to 1897, and among those laid to rest are Reed himself, members of fraternal orders, and Jim Smith, a World War I veteran. After falling into disrepair, the ground was taken up for care by the city in the 1970s.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the memory of Nacogdoches's African American pioneers who built churches and community in the hard decades after emancipation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Zion Hill Baptist Church Cemetery grew out of one of the most demanding chapters in American life: the decades after emancipation, when Black communities across the South set about building the institutions that freedom had made possible but had not provided. When the Reverend Lawson Reed arrived in Nacogdoches in 1878, he found no organized Baptist church serving the Black community — a gap that was, in those years, both a spiritual absence and a practical one, for the church was often the first and strongest institution a community could call its own.
This was the era of Reconstruction giving way to the long, hard period that followed. Newly freed people and their children were laying the foundations of independent congregations, schools, and mutual-aid societies, frequently with little more than determination and shared labor. A church was rarely handed to such a community; it was gathered, member by member, and raised by hand.
The cemetery that surrounds the story is itself a document of that time. Its unmarked and undated graves hint at burials earlier than any surviving stone can prove, and the marked graves that follow trace a community putting down roots meant to last generations.
People & events
For a time after his arrival, Reverend Reed worshiped at the Union Church alongside other Baptists as well as Presbyterians and Methodists, sometimes leading services there himself. But he pressed the local Baptists to organize a congregation of their own, and in 1879 they began to meet under a brush arbor — a simple shelter of branches, the humble birthplace of countless frontier and Southern churches.
The charter members whose names the marker preserves — Frank and Ellen Walton, Annie K. McClain, Jim and Annie Rigsby, Harriet Moore, Hattoe Vaughns, Velma Williams McCullough, and the Reeds — were the community's founders in the most literal sense. When winter approached and the brush arbor could no longer serve, the Waltons gave two acres of land for a building, an act of generosity that gave the congregation a permanent home and, in time, this burial ground.
The graves tell the rest. The earliest marked grave is that of Julia Harris, who died on February 8, 1897 — the only marked nineteenth-century burial, though the unmarked graves suggest earlier ones. Among those laid to rest here are Reverend Reed himself, who died in 1924 and whose grave is marked by two stones, and John B. Liggins, Amiel Rivers, and Jim Smith, who served in World War I. Several markers denote members of fraternal organizations. Early members continued to be buried here until the interment of Charley Blakey in 1945. In time the cemetery fell into disrepair, until a movement began in the early 1970s to have the city assume its care.
Its place in the American story
This burial ground is a chapter of the great, often unwritten American story of how freedom was made real at the ground level. The founding of a church under a brush arbor in 1879, the gift of two acres, the steady accumulation of graves across the decades — these are the small, deliberate acts by which a community declared its permanence in a place and an era that offered it little help in doing so.
The presence of World War I veterans among the graves connects this local ground to a national moment. Black Americans answered the call to serve in that war even as they were denied full citizenship at home, and their headstones here are a quiet testament to that paradox and that patriotism. The markers of fraternal organizations point to another pillar of Black community life in the period, the mutual-aid societies that offered fellowship, insurance, and dignity where the wider society offered none.
That the cemetery fell into disrepair and then was rescued through a community movement in the 1970s reflects a broader and ongoing American reckoning: the effort to recover and honor histories that had been allowed to fade. As the marker itself says, the burial ground remains a chronicle of the African American pioneers of Nacogdoches.
If you visit
A historic cemetery asks for a different kind of visit than a monument does — quieter, more attentive, more willing to read. Come to this one prepared to walk slowly among the stones and let the names do their work.
Look for the grave of Julia Harris, who died in 1897 and whose is the only marked burial surviving from the nineteenth century, and for the two stones marking the resting place of the Reverend Lawson Reed, the man who would not let the community go without its own church. Notice the markers that denote members of fraternal organizations, and the graves of the World War I veterans — Liggins, Rivers, and Smith — small emblems of service that repay a moment's pause. Between the marked graves, remember that the unmarked and undated ones hold their own untold stories, hinting at burials older than any stone can date.
This is a place to reflect rather than to rush. If you are tracing the deeper history of Nacogdoches, set aside time here for the founders who built a church and a community from a brush arbor and two donated acres. Treat the ground with the care it has finally been given, and let the marker's names remind you that history is made by ordinary people, one determined act at a time.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Lawson Reed
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Zion Hill First Baptist Church
Nacogdoches, TX
The Rev. Lawson Reed gathered this Black Baptist congregation in 1879, holding the first services in the open air beneath a brush arbor in the years after emancipation. By 1914 the growing membership raised its third home, a handsome brick church that blended Victorian styling with Gothic Revival detail. It was designed by Diedrich Rulfs, the German-born architect who shaped much of Nacogdoches's built landscape — a notable commission for a church founded by freedpeople.
Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches, TX
Once called the "American Cemetery," Oak Grove sits on land granted in 1826 to empresario Haden Edwards, leader of the Fredonian Rebellion, who is buried here. Its graves read like a roster of the Texas Republic: signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, veterans of San Jacinto, Sam Houston's secretary of war and personal physician, early millionaires, a master architect, and formerly enslaved men and women. Burials relocated from an older Spanish cemetery reach back to a stone marked "Father Mendoza, 1718."
E. J. Campbell School
Nacogdoches, TX
Opened in 1903 as the Nacogdoches Colored School and renamed in 1937 for longtime principal E. J. Campbell, this school served African American students from the town and surrounding countryside under Texas's 'separate but equal' segregation laws, which in practice left Black schools underfunded. Beginning under Campbell, students regularly visited Prairie View Normal School to glimpse the possibilities of higher education, and the results were remarkable: at one point more than two-thirds of graduates went on to college, many returning as certified teachers. The school served its community until Nacogdoches fully integrated in 1970.
William ("Bill") Goyens
Nacogdoches, TX
Born enslaved in South Carolina in 1794, William "Bill" Goyens escaped to Texas in 1821 and built a life of wealth and standing as a free Black man on the East Texas frontier. He aided the Army of Texas during the 1836 revolution and served as interpreter for the Houston-Forbes Treaty with the Cherokees that same year, earning a reputation for generosity before his death at Goyens' Hill in 1856.