Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church

Brush arbors were the first meeting places for many Black congregations in Texas. The Handbook of Texas describes them as clearings with log benches sheltered by tree branches, used by some independent congregations of enslaved people. Mount Pleasant organized in 1886, twenty-one years after emancipation, and also met under an arbor. The Handbook adds that Black churches in the decades after the war hosted political rallies, and that church women usually led the fundraising and sometimes kept the account books. The plaque does not say who raised this building.

What the plaque says

Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church Organized in October 1886 for the African-American community in the rural area southeast of Waco, this congregation held services under a brush arbor across the street from this site until a permanent building was erected. The Rev. Ural Crain, an Anglo minister from a nearby Baptist church, led the members for a year, until they called their first African-American pastor, the Rev. Ben Crain. Throughout its history, the Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church has developed programs of music, mission and community outreach. It remains a focal point for the community and a part of the heritage of this area of McLennan County. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Armstrong Browning Library — 5.9 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 6.6 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 6.8 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 7.1 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.

More markers nearby

• Downsville Baptist Church — 1.3 mi
• Saint John United Church of Christ — 2.9 mi
• Fletcher Cemetery — 3.5 mi
• Neil McLennan — 4.9 mi