St. John Missionary Baptist Church

The church's founders had been enslaved on Thomas Waters Dewalt's sugar plantation, which had its headquarters here in the 1850s. After the Civil War the plantation was divided into small blocks, and a mostly Black community grew up on them. It received a post office in 1898. The Sugar Land Railroad came through in 1912, and by 1914 Dewalt had about 100 people, two general stores and a sugar mill. The railroad was abandoned in the 1950s, and by 1990 the city limits of Missouri City took in the old community.

What the plaque says

St. John Missionary Baptist Church After the Civil War, former DeWalt Plantation slaves, led by Rev. Dave King, formed St. John Baptist Church (Colored) in 1869. In 1900, Anna Cartwright Roberts deeded two acres in the David Bright League to the church and County School District #19. In 1935, George L. Dew purchased the property and sold two acres in the William Stafford League to the church to relocate. In the 1960s, the church building was repositioned to the opposite side of the property and enlarged with materials from the former school. A rear addition was built in the 1970s. A 2006 arson fire heavily damaged the property. The church has held Juneteenth picnics, celebrations, activities and continual services for the surrounding communities. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 12 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 16 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• The Menil Collection — 16 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 16 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado, First Railroad in Texas — 4.3 mi
• Missouri City — 4.6 mi
• Stafford's Point — 5.1 mi
• Booth — 5.4 mi