Red Oak Missionary Baptist Church

Red Oak's own church history says the 1870s congregation left no surviving written records, though oral histories describe it, and that Sallie Rollins gave the land southeast of Eastman Road. A fire destroyed the building on March 7, 1929, during the pastorate of Rev. J. J. Finley, and members met at Rollins School or the Knights and Daughters of Tabor hall until it was rebuilt. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project adds that a storm wrecked the rebuilt church soon after, and that walls from the Tabor building went into the reconstruction.

What the plaque says

Red Oak Missionary Baptist Church In 1875, a group of freed African Americans founded a church south of the Longview townsite. Sallie Rollins donated land for Red Oak Grove Baptist Church, and Rev. Rube Wright was the first pastor. The original site was near current Eastman Road and Interstate 20, adjacent to Swanzcey Cemetery. In 1926-27, the church moved to its current site on land bought from the Jacobs and Rollins families. About that time, "grove" was dropped from the name. Members were actively involved with Butler College in Tyler and continue to encourage and influence young people through scholarships. The church's service and mission work has had a significant impact on the community and the region. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 20 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 21 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 21 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• Big Inch Pipeline — 0.3 mi
• Robert Gilmour LeTourneau — 0.9 mi
• Site of Harmon General Hospital — 0.9 mi
• Longview Junction — 2.5 mi