Mt. Zion Baptist Church

Bethlehem Baptist was organized in 1866, the first full year of freedom, in a county where that freedom was contested. The Handbook of Texas records that the Freedmen's Bureau office for Austin County sat at Hempstead, then inside the county, with too few troops to enforce the law. Its 1867 head, Capt. George Lancaster, judged that "only a spark was needed to set off an explosion." White Democrats answered the Union League with a Klan-like group, and attacks on Black residents were common. Black voters carried the county for Edmund J. Davis in 1869; by 1873 few dared vote.

What the plaque says

Mt. Zion Baptist Church In 1866, Joe and Abe Osborne and Louis Thompson organized the Bethlehem Baptist Church. The Rev. Wesley Stevens was the first pastor of the church, reorganized as Mt. Zion Baptist in the 1880s under the Rev. P.H. Collier. Members met in houses and later, under the direction of the Rev. H.H. Anderson, Sr., built a log sanctuary. Through the years, the church experienced a fire and a major storm, both of which destroyed the sanctuary. However, members rebuilt both times and the church continued to expand and develop at its current site. After well over a century, Mt. Zion Baptist Church still serves as a spiritual leader in the community. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 5.5 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.

More markers nearby

• Frydek Catholic Cemetery — 3.0 mi
• San Felipe de Austin — 4.0 mi
• Martin Allen — 4.6 mi
• San Felipe de Austin Cemetery — 5.0 mi