St. Frederick Baptist Church

Dicey Yett Johnson's roots lay in the part of Burnet County where slavery had been heaviest. The 1860 census counted 235 enslaved people held by sixty-nine owners, most of them around Spicewood and Double Horn Creek. After the war some freed people left, but many stayed, and the county's Black population was 358 in 1870 and 248 by 1880; after 1890 it was under 3 percent of the total. Some found work on farms and ranches, and by the turn of the century many had moved to Marble Falls to work in town.

What the plaque says

St. Frederick Baptist Church has served the African American community of Marble Falls for more than 120 years. It was founded in the home of Dicey Yett Johnson in 1893 with a small group of worshipers that became St. Frederick's congregation. Johnson was born into slavery in the nearby Spicewood area and married Green Johnson. They moved with their nine children to Marble Falls, founded in 1887, and lived in a small house behind the Roper Hotel where Dicey was employed. Dicey used her home as the organizational site of the congregation of the St. Frederick Baptist Church until they started using the former Blazing Star Lodge building in 1899. The African American community once lived in the northeast section of Marble Falls but started to move to the southwest portion of town. To accommodate that change in location in 1907, St. John's Association traded the land on Main Street for property down the hill from Main Street, near Avenue L. The building was moved to this new site and remodeled, and soon after church and school resumed at the new site. In 1955 this church located in the "hollow" was torn down and rebuilt at the corner of Avenue N and West First Street. The current church, built in 1978 at Avenue N and West Third Street, survived financial hardships of the 20th century. Since 1985 the church has also been an outreach center that provides meals for the needy and the home bound of the entire Marble Falls Area. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 8.6 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 12 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.
• Inks Lake State Park — 12 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 13 mi
  A free federal refuge north of Lake Travis kept for two songbirds that need old juniper and oak, with trails at the Doeskin Ranch unit near Bertram.

More markers nearby

• Michel's Drug Store — 0.4 mi
• Marble Falls Factory Site — 0.6 mi
• Marble Falls Depot — 0.6 mi
• Marble Falls School Building — 0.6 mi