Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church

Black education in this part of Hill County grew alongside its churches. The Handbook of Texas says Whitney built a school for Black children in 1885, the year it became a school district and the year after its first schoolhouse, and that Towash had separate Black and white schools: in 1905-06 the Black school there enrolled fifty pupils. Towash was one of three congregations that merged in 1883 to form Pleasant Hill. When the railroad drew settlers and businesses to Whitney, Towash declined, and its ruins now lie under Lake Whitney.

What the plaque says

Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church Among the first African-American Baptist congregations in Hill County were the churches at Towash (organized in 1869), Lofer's Bend, and near Aquilla. These three congregations were united in 1883 to form the Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church. Pleasant Hill's original building was demolished and the cornerstone laid for a new structure in 1894. Church trustees purchased the church lot from Dr. D. R. Wallace of Waco in 1901. The congregation had grown to about 100 members by 1907. More than 100 years later the members carry on the traditions of worship and community instilled by the early Pleasant Hill congregation. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 13 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Bosque Museum — 19 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Meridian State Park — 22 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.
• Cleburne State Park — 25 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.

More markers nearby

• Whitney — 0.6 mi
• Boesch House — 0.7 mi
• Whitney Memorial Park — 0.8 mi
• Towash — 3.0 mi