Webberville Ebenezer Baptist Church

John F. Webber, born in Vermont around 1786, fought as a private in the War of 1812 and was in Austin's colony by 1824. He married Silvia Hector, an enslaved woman, and on June 11, 1834, John Cryer freed her and her three children; the Webbers had at least eight more. Newcomers in the 1840s resented the marriage. In 1853 Webber bought land on the Rio Grande below Hidalgo and founded Webber's Ranch, where the family farmed in poverty. A Unionist, he fled to Mexico during the Confederate occupation of the valley and died at home in 1882.

What the plaque says

Webberville Ebenezer Baptist Church This church traces its origin to the plight of Anglo American John F. Webber, who along with his African American wife and children, settled in this sparsely populated area of Texas in 1839 to escape the racism they had experienced in towns and cities. A community known as Webber Prairie consisting of plantation owners and their slaves developed here. Racial prejudice caused Webber to sell his land to Colonel John Banks in 1851 and move his family to Mexico. In 1868 Matthew Duty donated one acre of land here for the purpose of building a church for the area's recently emancipated African Americans. That year the Webberville Ebenezer Baptist Church was organized as a mission of the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association. Charter members included Thomas Reads, Suns Johnson, Lowens Berry, and Mary Green. The Rev. Wesley Barrow served as Ebenezer's first pastor. In 1956 several members of the congregation left Ebenezer Baptist to form a church in Austin which became known as the New Light Ebenezer Baptist Church. Ebenezer Baptist remains active despite the relocation of many of Webberville's families to nearby urban centers. Former members continue to gather here on special occasions and holidays. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McKinney Falls State Park — 13 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 — 13 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 — 13 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.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.

More markers nearby

• Webberville — steps away
• Site of the Home of Col. Robert M. Coleman — 2.9 mi
• Decker United Methodist Church and Community — 8.5 mi
• Clayton Vocational Institute — 8.5 mi