Givens Homesite

The Givens place served as a neighborhood resource. Solomon Givens, a skilled carpenter, built a small store and barber shop, helped found Pine Grove Baptist Church and served about fifty years as its Sunday school superintendent, church clerk and deacon board chairman. He was a longtime trustee of Reed's Opening School, and he and his sons founded a chapter of the Grand Lodge of Pythias. Lula Givens taught Sunday school from the 1890s until her death in 1954. For about fifty years the family gave neighbors vegetables, pork, eggs, firewood and well water, the Texas Freedom Colonies Project records.

What the plaque says

Givens Homesite Solomon George Givens and his wife Lula (Burleson), both born in Houston County in 1871, were the children of former slaves. They were married in Crockett in 1891, and in 1892 they bought 34 acres of land here. Their farm proved a success and in 1893 they built a large 8-room house at this site. The Givenses were noted for their charity and as leaders in the development of a nearby school and Baptist church; baptism services took place in a tank on their land. For many years their home was the center of the African American farming community known as "Givens Hill". (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 29 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• Read's Opening — 0.9 mi
• Andrew Edwards Gossett — 2.4 mi
• Beasley Drive — 2.4 mi
• Hall's Bluff — 2.8 mi