Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

A. J. Hurdle, the church's first minister, led the Northeast Texas Christian Missionary Convention, formed at Daingerfield in 1900 to serve Black members of the Disciples of Christ, with a college as its chief aim. A women's group, the Christian College Building Association, raised enough by 1904 to buy 49 acres near Palestine. The cornerstone was laid on May 26, 1911, and the Northeast Texas Christian Theological and Industrial College opened in January 1912 with seven students and four faculty. Students farmed the land. The main building burned about 1920, the school closed, and nothing of it remains.

What the plaque says

Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Organized in the turmoil of the reconstruction era, Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has been a strong supporter of its community since 1879. After the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, many formerly enslaved African Americans attempted to escape the violence that ensued by forming loose-knit communities among unwanted lands, such as Center Point in Hunt County. Some of the earliest freedmen to gather in the thickets near Center Point were Charlie C. Haley, Henry Polk, and Henry H. Brown along with their families. As they survived in homes and in the woods, Haley led the group in religious meetings. Around 1870 ordained minister and Elder Andrew Jackson (A.J.) Hurdle moved his growing family from a freedom colony near Mount Vernon to Center Point. By 1879 Hurdle and Haley organized a church known as Center Point Christian Church in the middle of the thickets with hurdle as its first minister. In 1900, Hurdle was elected president of the Northeast Texas Christian Missionary Convention. The mission of the group was to serve African American members of the Christian Church and its primary focus was to create a college. Several members of the church were active in the group and were a part of the faculty at Northeast Texas Christian Theological and Industrial College in Anderson County. Over the years, the congregation has had a record for its ability and willingness to build new church buildings debt-free. As an early congregation organized in a freedom colony, Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is proud of its heritage. Offering protection from reconstruction violence, the church has always supported education, jobs, homes and families. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 3.6 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 25 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 29 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Majors Army Airfield — 2.1 mi
• Wesley United Methodist Church — 3.2 mi
• William Lane — 3.5 mi
• Library Movement in Greenville — 4.1 mi