Ebenezer Baptist Church

The Handbook of Texas counts 577 African Americans in Hunt County in 1860, held as slaves by 142 White residents. It says the number passed 1,200 in the war's last half, as slaveholders from other states brought enslaved people to Texas to keep them from Union forces. After emancipation, it adds, many White residents bitterly resented Black freedom and the vote, and violence against Black residents plagued the county until Army troops arrived in January 1869. Black congregations like Ebenezer in Wolfe City, organized in 1889, were built inside that history.

What the plaque says

Ebenezer Baptist Church The earliest African Americans in northern Hunt County came as enslaved people in the 1840s. The area was sparsely populated until after the Civil War, when a settlement formed around Lemuel Pinckney Wolfe's mill on Oyster Creek. In 1882, Wolfe City received its post office, and in the same year, White citizens organized a Baptist church. Although few records exist to document the early years following Emancipation for African Americans in Wolfe City, oral tradition conveys an atmosphere of alliance and cooperation. Wolfe City's Baptist church members assisted their African American neighbors in establishing a congregation. On Sunday, June 9, 1889, Brother Harrison Loftin, a former slave, brought together E.D. Royal, Arthur Clark, M.H. Wolfe, Calvin Bomar, Melvin Wolfe and Rev. R.C. Pender from the Baptist church, along with Nash Higgins, Turner Dean, Jane Loftin, Lydia Loftin, Mollie Higgins, and Louise Loftin from the African American community. Notably, four African American women were at this organizational meeting; Louise Loftin suggested the name Ebenezer Baptist Church, from its Biblical association as God's "stone of help." Rev. A.C. Brown was the first pastor of Wolfe City's first African American church. The first church services were held in a one-room dwelling on this site, replaced by later sanctuaries. Beloved Reverend John Williams has the honorable distinction of shepherding the church for fifty-six years (1941-1997). Annual homecoming celebrations have been held on the second Sunday of June. Although most written records such as church minutes, photographs and other memorabilia have been lost or destroyed over the years, Ebenezer Baptist Church remains a significant part of Wolfe City history and a testament to the faith of its citizens. (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 17 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.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 23 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

• Blanton School — steps away
• Historic Site of Wolfe's Mill — steps away
• Gober Garage — 7.1 mi
• Portland — 7.1 mi