Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church

The land under this church had belonged to the Barton family, who enslaved people here. Accounts of the Bartons say Hugh Barton and his brother-in-law George Warren taught enslaved people to read, which Texas law forbade, and built them a church on the Colorado River bank. After emancipation the neighborhood, also called Barton Hill and Utley, lived largely as sharecroppers on Barton land. Union Hill's members raised a new building in 1939 under the Rev. H. L. Price, with help from neighbors, and about a dozen pastors have served since the Rev. Joshua Brice.

What the plaque says

Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church According to local tradition this site was used by area slaves for gathering purposes. Silvie Story, William Hill, Martha Young, Paulie Johnson, Grant McBride, and Martha J. Hill organized this church in 1864 with the help of the Rev. Joshua Brice. Early baptisms took place in the Colorado River. By 1900 the congregation consisted of about 20 members. The C. M. Rogers family deeded 9 acres to the church in the early 1900s. An educational facility was built in 1976 and a new sanctuary in 1988. The congregation continues to provide worship and educational services for the community. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 9.7 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 18 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 19 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 19 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Home of Col. Robert M. Coleman — 3.6 mi
• Webberville Ebenezer Baptist Church — 6.1 mi
• Webberville — 6.1 mi
• Camp Swift — 6.7 mi