Birdston Valley

Goodwill Baptist Church was the first organized institution in Birdston Valley, and its reports show how the community ran. A Navarro County history says it belonged to the Friendship Association, a Black Baptist body, and reported 60 members in 1884 and 108 in 1891, with 19 baptisms that year. Isom J. Collins pastored until his death in 1920, apparently unpaid, and also ran a gin. When the Masonic lodge formed in 1907 it met first in that gin, the only two-story building in the valley.

What the plaque says

Birdston Valley Developed as a community of former slaves following the Civil War, Birdston Valley takes its name from the nearby settlement of Birdston (2 miles south). Located on Richland Creek bottom lands, residents of the community were primarily farmers. The Birdston Valley Cemetery may have been used as early as 1855, as evidenced by the grave of Willis Kelly (1850-1855), though the marker was probably placed at a later date. A few marked burials date to the 1870s. Many of the community's early settlers are buried here, though some are interred in a nearby slave cemetery. Religious services may have been held in the area as early as 1876. The Goodwill Baptist Church was organized sometime between 1876 and 1883. The first pastor was Isom J. Collins. The first church building was damaged beyond repair in a 1939 windstorm, and was replaced by a second structure. The Birdston Valley Masonic Lodge was organized on August 22, 1907, and met temporarily in a gin owned by Isom J. Collins. A two-story lodge was built, which also served as a schoolhouse for children of the community. The building was destroyed in a 1982 fire and replaced with a one-story structure. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 12 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 14 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 24 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 28 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.

More markers nearby

• Birdston Community and Cemetery — 1.2 mi
• Cade Cemetery — 4.1 mi
• Hopewell Cemetery — 4.9 mi
• Richland Cemetery — 6.1 mi