Mercy Seat Baptist Church

Mercy Seat was organized in a place the Handbook calls Graball, where Black residents made up about 80 percent of the population in the 1880s and voted Republican. In 1886 the local electoral board included two Black officials, and that year the Ku Klux Klan destroyed the community's ballot box; the violence later drew a congressional investigation. The church was founded eight years afterward. Graball had three general stores and a drugstore by 1884, but the rail lines favored towns nearer shipping, its post office closed in 1908, and the town disappeared while the church stayed.

What the plaque says

Mercy Seat Baptist Church Reverend J. L. Lawson and community members organized the Mercy Seat Baptist Church in 1894. Located in what was then called Graball, the original church building was built on property south of the current location. In 1953, the membership voted to build a new church, with each member paying one dollar per month for the building fund. In 1981, the rear addition of the existing church was built and the whole building was bricked the next year. The church has been active in the community with festivals, outreach programs, scholarships and mission trips. Mercy Seat Baptist Church thrived throughout the 20th century even after Graball declined and it continues to serve the Washington area today. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Star of the Republic Museum — 4.3 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 4.5 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Navasota — 8.4 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 14 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

More markers nearby

• Amos Gates — 1.3 mi
• Friedens Church of Washington, UCC — 3.1 mi
• Courtney Cemetery — 3.3 mi
• George Campbell Childress Statue — 4.3 mi