Black Education in Seguin

Born in Danville, Kentucky, William B. Ball worked his way through Oberlin College and served in the Union cavalry, then organized a military company at San Antonio and served on the frontier before moving to Seguin in 1871. In 1884 he and an association of Black Baptists founded a college in Seguin, reorganized in 1887 as Guadalupe Colored College, which he led for eight years, aided by George W. Brackenridge. He was pastor of Second Baptist Church for thirty years, and a pool and gymnasium at Ball High were dedicated to him in 1939.

What the plaque says

Black Education in Seguin Sponsored by the Second Baptist Church, the first public school for blacks in Seguin opened in 1871. Through the efforts of the Rev. Leonard Ilsley (1818-1903), and the Rev. William Baton Ball (1840-1923), a frame school was built on this site, and named Abraham Lincoln School. Ball was the first principal. In 1892, the Lincoln School became a part of the Seguin Public School System. The name was changed to Ball High School in 1925, and ceased to be separate facility for blacks in 1966 when the Seguin Public School System was integrated. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 13 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Gruene Historic District — 14 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 22 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 24 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.

More markers nearby

• Juan Seguin School — steps away
• Second Baptist Church of Seguin — 0.4 mi
• Guadalupe County, C.S.A. — 0.4 mi
• Juan Seguin — 0.4 mi