Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church
Colmesneil, Tyler County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Zion Hill Missionary Baptist church is one of the earliest churches to serve this area's African American community. In the early 1880s, a Freedmen's colony grew here in response to the availability of jobs at a newly opened sawmill. The Rev. George Durden and his congregation, with the assistance of the Rev. A. Venerable, moderator of the Trinity Valley Baptist Association, officially organized Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church in 1881. It was the first black church congregation in Colmesneil. Worship services were held in a log cabin built by the congregation until the early 1900s. The church has occupied several locations and has served not only as a place of worship, but also as a school for black children. In the early 1990s Zion Hill Missionary Baptist church was moved to a site east of the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks adjacent to the Odd Fellows Hall. In 1933, the church was rebuilt at this site six blocks southwest of its original location. For over one hundred years Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church has served the community witht a variety of worship and educational programs and maintained a leadership role in civic activities.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church is one of the oldest African American congregations in this part of Tyler County. It grew out of a Freedmen's colony that formed in the early 1880s around jobs at a new sawmill, and was formally organized in 1881 by the Rev. George Durden as the first Black congregation in Colmesneil. For decades it served not only as a place of worship but as a school for Black children and a center of civic life, worshipping first in a log cabin the members built themselves.
Why it matters
The church embodies the way freed people and their descendants built independent religious, educational, and civic institutions across the post-emancipation South.
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Related people
- · Rev. George Durden
- · Rev. A. Venerable
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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