St. Stephen's Missionary Baptist Church

The school at St. Stephen's outlived its first building. Known as the Waters Park Colored School, it taught Black children through the eighth grade, and a 1932 Travis County map labels it the Summit Negro School. When the schoolhouse burned, classes moved into the church. The congregation was established through the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association and still meets on Amherst Drive, near where it began; its present building went up in 1978. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project lists the Waters Park community among Texas's Black settlements.

What the plaque says

St. Stephen's Missionary Baptist Church Organized in 1887, this congregation first met in a small wooden building near this site. The Rev. Stephens Smith served as first pastor of the church, which served residents of the Waters Park, Round Rock, and Pflugerville communities. Land for a church and school was given by Mr. and Mrs. Anderson Peoples in 1887. St. Stephen's School, also known as Waters Park Colored School, provided education for black children in the area. A new sanctuary was built in 1978. This church continues to serve a large community with outreach programs. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Round Rock — 6.6 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Mount Bonnell — 7.7 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 — 9.3 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 — 9.5 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.

More markers nearby

• Waters Park — 0.6 mi
• The Gault Homestead — 2.7 mi
• Pond Springs Community and School — 3.3 mi
• Texas Newspapers, C.S.A. — 3.3 mi