Wesley United Methodist Church

Wesley's move east in 1929 followed a sale. In 1928 the Austin school board bought the congregation's property for $17,500 to expand the public schools, and the church built its present home for about $50,000. Its reach was wide: Samuel Huston College held most of its classes in the church for several years, the Austin Area Urban League was founded here in the 1970s, and a church task force pressed for the new Kealing Junior High that opened in 1986. Isaac Wright, the freedmen's first pastor, served from 1865 to 1868.

What the plaque says

Wesley United Methodist Church This congregation was established at the end of the Civil War for freedmen of the Austin area. It was begun through the efforts of the Rev. Joseph Welch, a white Methodist missionary, and the Rev. Isaac Wright, a black minister of the Methodist Church, North. The original meetings were conducted in the basement of the Tenth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which many of this congregation's early members had attended as slaves. The first building for the Wesley United Methodist Church (Wesley Chapel Church) was a stone sanctuary with a dirt floor built in 1867 at Ninth and Neches streets. A new edifice, known as "Old Wesley on the Hill", was constructed in 1882. The Site served the congregation until 1929, when the church moved to new facilities here. One of the leading black churches in Texas, this congregation has actively participated in community projects, mission work and educational leadership. Church facilities have been used for classes of Samuel Huston College and for formal organization of the West Texas Methodist Conference. The church's programs and dramatic growth continue to reflect the ideals and religious dedication of its founders. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George Washington Carver Museum — steps away
  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 — steps away
  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 — 0.4 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.
• Texas State Capitol — 0.9 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• George Washington Carver Branch Library — steps away
• Dr. Lewis and Carolyn Mitchell — steps away
• Victory Grill — steps away
• Lydia Street Fire Station — steps away