Historical Marker
Moab Community
Lexington, Lee County · Texas
Erected 2012
Moab's story after the years on this plaque is one of consolidation and memory. By the early 1950s its school had become the Moab Common School District, and in 1966 it was merged into the Lexington schools. By the early 1980s only a church and two cemeteries remained, and county maps of 2000 still showed the name and both burial grounds, with no population given. One of them, the Mt. Nebo Church Cemetery, is also called the Moab Cemetery. In 2026 the Texas Freedom Colonies Project listed Moab as located but still in need of research.
What the plaque says
Moab Community MOAB COMMUNITY SITUATED ABOUT TEN MILES SOUTHWEST OF LEXINGTON, THE COMMUNITY OF MOAB WAS A PREDOMINATELY AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY. THERE ARE INDICATIONS THAT THE AREA WAS WELL POPULATED BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR BUT BECAME MORE SO FOLLOWING EMANCIPATION. MANY "FREEDOM COLONIES" FORMED IN LEE COUNTY AFTER THE CIVIL WAR AND BEGAN NEW BLACK LANDOWNER COMMUNITIES. MOAB WAS MOSTLY A COMMUNITY OF FARMERS WHO WERE DEPENDENT UPON INCOME FROM CROPS. TO SUPPLEMENT THEIR INCOME, FAMILIES WOULD GO ON "COTTON PICKS" AND FOLLOW COTTON HARVESTING THROUGHOUT TEXAS AND PARTS OF NEW MEXICO. FOR FOOD, FAMILIES HARVESTED PEANUTS, CORN AND OTHER VEGETABLES AND RAISED HOGS, CATTLE, CHICKENS AND TURKEYS. A COMMUNITY SCHOOL OPENED AROUND 1900 AND, BY THE 1930s, THE SETTLEMENT HAD THE SCHOOL, TWO CHURCHES, A CEMETERY, POST OFFICE AND A NUMBER OF SCATTERED DWELLINGS. ACCORDING TO A 1935 BOARD OF EDUCATION SURVEY, MOAB'S SCHOOL EMPLOYED TWO TEACHERS WITH FORTY-EIGHT STUDENTS ENROLLED IN GRADES ONE TO TEN. THE SCHOOL BURNED IN THE LATE 1930s BUT WAS REBUILT ONE YEAR LATER. DURING THE INTERIM, THE SCHOOL WAS HOUSED IN THE METHODIST CHURCH. TWO CHURCHES EXISTED IN THE MOAB COMMUNITY. MOUNT ZION BAPTIST CHURCH WAS LED BY REV. PERSON FROM THE 1930s TO THE 1960s AND THE CHURCH HAD OVER 50 MEMBERS AT ITS PEAK. THE BAPTIST CHURCH BURNED IN THE 1960s AND WAS NOT REBUILT. MT. NEBO AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IS THE ONLY CHURCH THAT REMAINS IN THE COMMUNITY. EACH YEAR, SPECIAL PROGRAMS BRING DESCENDANTS BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY. THIS ONCE-THRIVING COMMUNITY REPRESENTS A TRIUMPH IN KINSHIP AND PERSEVERANCE, AND THE BEGINNINGS OF A PEOPLE AFTER SLAVERY. (2012)
Where it stands
30.32231, -97.11932 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 16 miA museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
- Bastrop State Park — 18 miThe westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
- Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 24 miTwo park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
- Round Top and Festival Hill — 31 miA German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.