St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church

The settlement the church served was small and long-lived. Its first families were those of Pete McDade, George Caldwell, Will Smith, Ned Tyson and Willie Allen. A second congregation, St. Matthew's Missionary Baptist, stood by 1920 and closed in 1973. A cemetery west of St. Mary's opened in the 1920s for African and Mexican Americans, and a school followed in 1928. In 1959 St. Mary's was rebuilt on Farm Road 1825. When county commissioners tried in 1978 to rename the place the Western Addition, they could not get the owners' consent, and the old name stood.

What the plaque says

St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church In the early twentieth century, African American workers in the Pflugerville Cotton Industry were not allowed to buy property in town. In 1910, La Rue Noton, a farmer who owned around 1,200 acres west of Pflugerville, set aside an acre and sold lots to the workers for fifty dollars each. The settlement was recorded in county records as Pflugerville's colored addition. In 1909, Reverend Square Roberts held church services under a brush arbor on the Fritz Pfluger Farm in the colored addition. A few months later, services were held in the schoolhouse. In January 1910, under Reverend Roberts' leadership, a Baptist church was organized. In the first meeting, Sister Luella Henry suggested the name St. Mary Baptist Church and the motion carried. During the early years of the newly established church, many pastors led the congregation. In 1914, a lot was purchased that would house the first church building. The building was completed from 1914 to 1916. During Reverend Nelson's tenure in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the building was moved from the back lot to the front. Due to an increase in attendance, the church was remodeled and expanded. With an active Sunday school program, organization of the Baptist training union and a diversity fellowship with other area churches, St. Mary Missionary Baptist church has forged ties in the community. From humble beginnings and twenty members, this church has grown to over 400 members and has been a beacon of light in the community for over a century. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Bonnell — 12 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 12 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• Harry Ransom Center — 13 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 13 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.

More markers nearby

• Pflugerville — 0.5 mi
• The Gault Homestead — 2.9 mi
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Dessau — 3.0 mi
• Waters Park — 5.2 mi