African American Catholic Community

In 1870 the census counted Black residents by name for the first time, and ten of them were named Sweed. The 1860 schedules had listed the enslaved only by owner and age. A diocesan history suggests that freed people held by the Spann family took new surnames as they went looking for work. Abraham and Elicy Sweed are the forebears of the families still here. In 1882 M. C. Spann Sr. deeded Abraham Sweed 100 acres. After Holy Rosary burned in 1915, Elicy Sweed kept the community together by hosting the rosary at her home.

What the plaque says

African American Catholic Community Believed to be the oldest African American Catholic community in Texas, this settlement traces its history to the late 1840s. The Spann families migrated to Hidalgo from South Carolina in 1848, bringing several slaves to the area. A Catholic mission was established for the new settlers and the slave families worshipped with them at a log cabin called the Holy Rosary or the Old Spann Chapel. The Old Catholic Cemetery, located near the log cabin, was the Spann family cemetery. The Spanns and the Sweeds (the slave families) are buried there, and it is still in use today. In 1888 Father Martin Francis Huhn organized a mission specifically for the African American community, conducting Mass monthly in the log chapel. A separate chapel was constructed in 1936 by Father George Elmendorf and named Sacred Heart. In 1969 a church building and community hall were constructed at Post Oak on land deeded from Spann descendants to the Sweeds. The church structure was named the Blessed Virgin Mary Chapel. A new church building was completed in 1995 to serve the African American community in the Brenham area, descendants of the original Sweed families. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 2.6 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 2.8 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Navasota — 8.0 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 9.2 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

More markers nearby

• Asa Brigham — 1.8 mi
• John William Smith — 1.8 mi
• Washington-on-the-Brazos — 2.7 mi
• Washington County — 2.7 mi