Saving Texas Freedom Colonies

SAVING TEXAS FREEDOM COLONIES

Saving Texas Freedom Colonies By: Dr. Andrea Roberts, Texas A&M University With the assistance of students in her 2020 More Than Monuments Course

Part 1: An Introduction to Texas Freedom Colonies What are Freedom Colonies?

Freedom Colonies are places that were settled by formerly enslaved people during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras in Texas following Emancipation.

From 1865-1930, African Americans accumulated land and founded 557 historic black settlements or Freedom Colonies. Freedom Colonies were intentional communities created largely in response to political and economic repression by mainstream white society.

Freedom Colonies occupy a diverse range of landscapes from rural villages to urban neighborhoods, including these cottages in Freedmen’s Town, Houston. Photo by Gerald Moorhead, 1988.

In these places, Black Texans could much better avoid the perils of debt bondage, sharecropping, and racialized violence from white communities, and live largely self-sustaining, independent lives on their own property. (Sitton, T., & Conrad, J.H. 2005) Since their founding, Freedom Colony descendants have dispersed, and hundreds of settlements’ status and locations are unknown. Gentrification, cultural erasure, natural disasters, resource extraction, population loss, urban renewal, and land dispossession have all contributed to their decline. Freedom Colony descendants’ lack of access to technical assistance, ecological and economic vulnerability, and invisibility in public records has quickened the disappearance of these historic Texas communities.

While the name “Freedom Colonies” applies uniquely to Texas settlements, Freedmen’s settlements were by no means solely a Texas phenomenon. After the Civil War, independent black communities emerged across the South.

However, in the present day, Freedom Colonies find themselves in a distinct position when contrasted with other black communities across the South. For example, many of the Freedmen’s settlements that receive scholarly or institutional attention, such as Tuskegee and Talladega, Alabama, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and Rosewood and Eatonville, Florida, remain populated, have large anchor institutions like colleges, are well documented, and mapped. In contrast, many Texas Freedom Colonies were often never incorporated and have fledgling populations with have little

Freedom Colonies were havens for Black Texans seeking refuge from repression and violence. Formerly enslaved people faced danger when attempting to exercise their political rights within white spaces. Even voting could ignite fierce intimidation, like that experienced by the Freedmen pictured here, voting for the first time in 1866, protected by Union Guard; University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History.

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documentation or legal authority to make planning decisions (Roberts, A., & Biazar, M. J. 2019).

Freedom Colonies located in urban areas, though well defined, often compete within larger political systems in which they are relegated to the category “neighborhood,” or are lumped into larger geographical areas based on racial census concentrations rather than being recognized as distinct, politically sovereign communities.

Freedom Colonies as Cultural Landscapes

A majority of known Freedom Colonies are located in the eastern half of Texas. Why? The eastern half of the state contained a majority of the farmland and plantations on which the formerly enslaved once worked. Further, these coastal and flood-prone areas were some of the few areas in which African Americans could obtain land through adverse possession or squatting. In other cases, though rare, former plantation owners willed land to their Black offspring. Though originally concentrated in rural areas, Freedom Colonies emerged on the edges of major cities.

Due to urbanization and sprawl, today’s suburbs and major cities are founded atop Freedom Colonies. Common elements and characteristics of Texas Freedom Colonies’ cultural landscapes are their anchor institutions: schools, cemeteries, lodges, and churches. Cemeteries and churches are the most persistent elements in these landscapes. Often several Freedom Colonies accessed the same churches and schools. That is why clusters of homesteads usually best define the Freedom Colony settlement pattern. Finally, the shared belief or knowledge of a community having once existed in a specific area is passed on through storytelling and commemorative events.

Freedom colonies are not, however, static landscapes, but active communities composed of dispersed yet committed social and kinship networks who return to preserve historic churches, homesteads, Rosenwald Schools, and cemeteries. Gatherings for festivals, funerals, church services, homecomings and family reunions are times during which descendants of Freedom Colony founders celebrate their successes and plan for the future of the settlements’’ remaining extant features.

Left: Many Freedom Colonies to hide their existence, black settlers often created their communities in little sought-after, low- lying communities prone to flooding. Shown here is a topographic map featuring two colonies, Shankleville and Liberty.

Geological Survey (U.S.). Shankleville Quadrangle, 1985. The Portal to Texas History.

Right: Tour in Shankleville of an Odom Homestead outbuilding. The family has been actively rehabilitating the homestead’s main house and outbuildings. Photo by Jackson Clay/JKC Visuals, 2019.

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Identifying Freedom Colonies

A way to recognize or identify a Freedom Colony in a location would be to notice aspects of the natural landscape and the property types that remain, and to listen to residents define the borders, cultural landmarks, and the names they ascribe to their own communities. Freedom Colonies would commonly be found in bottomlands and floodplains, which were areas whites found less desirable for land ownership. The land may be muddy, near a water source, and in a lower elevation than other surrounding communities would. Other characteristics to identify a colony would be to look at the remaining buildings, assess what they are/were, and their time period of construction based on materials. A nearby cemetery or gravestones could also identify the evidence of a community, and by looking at the names, dates, and inscriptions, the observer could learn when formerly enslaved people lived in a given Freedom Colony (Sitton, T., & Conrad, J.H. 2005). Churches, particularly their cornerstones, provide helpful clues about local leaders and land owning families. Cross referencing these with county histories or personal archival data like funeral and church anniversary programs can reveal the names of settlements.

Cultural resource surveys, historical monographs, and academic theses are often the best written sources for information on Freedom Colonies locations because public and government records often provide little documentation of their existence. Archaeological surveys, while containing helpful historical information, often omit precise locations to prevent vandalism and looting.

Floodplain and Texas Department of Transportation maps from the past sixty years at times contain the names of Freedom Colonies that later were removed when the population there became non-existent. Walking tours with residents and descendants of community founders are particularly important because these are often the only means of accessing and locating some Freedom Colonies.

Vulnerable Communities

Texas Freedom Colonies have a variety of factors working against them and threatening their existence. These plots of land are often officially undocumented plots in the government’s eyes, so land ownership is a blurred line. Complex systems of inheritance and division of land lead to divided homesteads with unclear legal understanding of who owns what; and third party actors can purchase individual parcels that destroy the integrity of the community. They are also vulnerable to being forgotten or undiscovered because most accounts of these colonies are from eyewitnesses and oral sharing, mostly by older generations of people, who are quickly disappearing or being forgotten. There is also the struggle to officially recognize these colonies through designation on the National Register of Historic Places, because there are often issues of defining the colonies within the official standards for designation. Another factor making these places vulnerable is their physical location coupled with a lack of maintenance. With limited access to their rural locations and the hazards of being in flood plains, most physical evidence of these Freedom Colonies are being destroyed (Sitton, T., & Conrad, J. H. 2005). There was also a turning point in Freedom Colonies during a decline in population during after-World War 2, part of a national trend of the Great Migration, violence, loss of building integrity, demolition, neglect, and red lining and segregationist zoning all over America (Texas Freedom Colonies).

Distribution of Freedom Colonies throughout the State

According to the Texas Freedom Colonies Project’s Atlas, there are 557 known place names.

Of those some 357 Freedom Colony locations have been verified by way of a remaining feature (object, structure, site), census status, or other publicly available databases. However, through online crowd-sourcing and offline surveys, the Project has identified the names and locations for another fifty settlements not originally listed. While a majority fall within the eastern half of Texas, the true statewide distribution of Freedom Colony settlements is not yet known.

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The Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas and Study contains a database of known settlement names, locations, documents, images, and crowdsourced surveys of information about historic Black settlements founded 1865-1930. The map’s blue dots are the 357 Freedom Colonies for which locations have been verified.

Part 2: Freedom Colony Documentation and Preservation The Importance of Research

Most Freedom Colony history is embedded in the memories of elders or buried in their historic cemeteries. Rarely did families maintain written documentation of their structures, cemetery maps, or communal land ownership records among kinship networks. Further, the absence of Freedom Colonies from the public record, land ownership instability, and declining building conditions require cultural resource managers to rely on creative approaches to identifying data sources to support documentation.

Freedom Colony documentation and preservation requires research methods associated with various disciplines. Due to the diversity in the conditions of Texas Freedom Colonies, those engaged in documentation and preservation must match the appropriate methods to the context. In some urban Freedom Colonies, houses and churches associated with a specific period of significance or settlement pattern are still intact. Architectural historians, architects, and preservationists might easily piece together the story of these places and even locate city records containing boundaries and names. In many rural Freedom Colonies, however, conditions may require social scientists with a different skills set because many remote rural settlements will only have cemeteries or churches remaining and very few full- time residents. Settlements with few remaining features and low populations may require historical archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and sociologists: researchers skilled in oral history interviewing, archival research, participatory preservation and archaeology, and ethnography.

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Engaging in Freedom Colony research is about more than just preservation, but a chance to reshape the narratives surrounding African American history in Texas and the country. Identification and documentation of Freedom Colonies often requires supplementing historical inquiry with the voices and perspectives of Black Texans. Research thus becomes not only a means for preserving buildings but also an all-inclusive documentation of placemaking and African American stories of survival, resilience, and self-determined community building that are evidence of their culturally specific relationship to land ownership after Enslavement (Clay History & Edu Svcs, 2019).

Ongoing Documentation, Interpretation, and Preservation Initiatives

According to Schuster’s Preserving the Built Heritage, there are five primary preservation instruments or “tools.” Ownership and operation of property are the first of these. Regulation of the land is the second tool. Incentives and disincentives are the third tools. Allocation and enforcement of property rights is the fourth tool that ties heavily into the first tool. Information and education is the fifth tool. Grassroots and community groups are working to preserve Freedom Colonies, but have difficulty accessing and applying the tools available to other communities.

Universities often step into the gap to support these grassroots efforts while state agencies spearhead capacity building and public education projects. Some scholars involve descendants in their documentation processes. Descendants, lay historians, scholars, and grassroots preservation groups have initiated ongoing documentation initiatives taking place within Freedom Colonies.

While some approaches employ sophisticated technologies, other approaches still relay on highly personal interactions with descendants, and others a mixture of both.

What follows are a variety of Freedom Colony documentation projects falling within all of these categories.

Grassroots Heritage Conservation: Cultural Traditions

Grassroots communities and groups host annual events such as homecomings that aim to celebrate the heritage of African American settlements and raise funds for further maintenance for continuous preservation. There is a common objective, which is to “commemorate the black settlement founders, work to reinvest in the areas deemed important, and maintain a network with other settlements in the region” (Walk-Morris, 2020). These annual events are full of music, storytelling, and remembrance of the history of the settlements and the family members who have been connected. During these events, elders share memories and event organizers design programs and corresponding booklets containing social histories of families, institutions and leaders from local Freedom Colonies.

These events include extended and church families who come together and enjoy music Shankleville Homecoming in Newton County, Texas, 2014. Photo by Andrea Roberts and heritage, and contribute financially to stewardship efforts.

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University and College Research Initiatives in Texas

At Texas A&M University, there are different projects and research centers that are contributing to the documentation and identification of Freedom Colonies like the Texas Freedom Colonies project, the Center for Housing and Urban Development, and the Center for Heritage Conservation.

Center for Heritage Conservation: Church and Cemetery Documentation.

The Center for Heritage Conservation conducts interdisciplinary research and projects on all aspects of built and natural heritage. Most recently, they have led documentation of Dabney Hill Missionary Church and Hockley Cemetery within Freedom Colonies. Center for Heritage Conservation website: arch.tamu.edu/impact/centers-institutes-outreach/chc

Left: Priya Jain, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University and Associate Director for the Center for Heritage Conservation, has joined with Gloria Smith to preserve Dabney Hill Missionary Church, founded 1887. Documentation is the first step. Jain brought her students out to help assess and survey church conditions. July 2019.

Right: Andrew Billingsley, a graduate assistant from Texas A&M University, operates a terrestrial laser scanner as an archaeological team from Texas A&M identifies burial plots in the Hockley Family Cemetery associated with a San Antonio area Freedom Colony. Friday, March 15, 2019. Photo by Matthew Busch

Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas & Study is an online crowdsourcing tool that contains surveys, interactive maps, and a database. Limestone County Texas Freedom Colonies are shown on the sample map generated through the Atlas’ search function.

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The table for the Limestone County on the Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas gives even more detailed information.

The Center for Housing and Urban Development: The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas & Study.

The Texas Freedom Colonies Project records the names, locations, and origins stories of the Black settlements in Texas using an ArcGIS digital humanities platform. Dr. Andrea Roberts started the Texas Freedom Colonies project to preserve and protect Freedom Colonies facing ecological threats. Documenting disappearing settlements through crowdsourcing is one of The Project’s initiatives.

The public can add information to the atlas via the web map application tool. To identify new Freedom Colonies, website visitors can complete one of two surveys or add a point directly to the map. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project website: thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com

The University of Texas Archaeological Site Documentation and Interpretation The Antioch Colony site and the Ransom Williams archaeological sites are two projects in which Freedom Colony homesteads and daily life have been documented. A new exhibit (2020) at the Bullock Museum in Austin interprets several Freedom Colonies using artifacts, oral histories, and a new short documentary film including Antioch Colony located near Buda, Texas. Terri Myers and Maria Franklin led preservation efforts of the Ransom Williams archaeological site, located near the Travis-Hays county line. Their work included conducting oral history interviews of descendants. The site allows a glimpse into the lives of the formerly enslaved Ransom and Sarah Williams who settled forty acres and had nine children. The image plots the land where Ransom and Sarah Williams’ Farmstead was located. Artifacts (glass bottles, a marble, parts of a comb, a bone-handle knife, floral printed ceramic plates, decorative buttons, and toy gun) offer insight daily life. The Ransom Williams site was a precursor to several area Freedom Colonies that would follow, including Rose and Antioch Colony.

Left: The “Tell your story” form on the Freedom Colony Storyteller Portal allows website visitors to complete the survey and upload documents, videos, images, stories, and location data related to Freedom Colonies. The data then populates new “points” for previously unmapped Freedom Colonies, or adds more data to existing dots.

Right: Project leaders with one of Ransom and Sarah Williams’ great-granddaughters. From left, UT Austin archaeologist Maria Franklin, who conducted oral history interviews, archaeologist Doug Boyd, Corrine Williams Harris, and historian Terri Myers. For more information visit: texasbeyondhistory.net/ransom

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TAMU School of Law and Texas Freedom Colonies Project Partnership.

One the biggest challenges to maintaining settlement patterns is retaining family land ownership in Freedom Colonies. Much land was attained through adverse possession (squatting) or eventually lost through partition sales. Several formerly enslaved The Community & Family Heritage Preservation Association, headquarters are inside the historic George Washington Carver School Freedom Colony residents avoided in Dixie Community, a Freedom Colony in Jasper County. Photo by Steve courthouses and as a result, much Stewart land ownership went unrecorded leaving clouded titles. Without continuous, stable ownership of farmland and homesteads, the cultural landscape dissipates. Heirs’ property is inherited land that is owned by two or more people as tenants-in-common. These properties are typically passed down without a will and without any sort of formal probate process. Ownership of this kind makes it difficult for the owners of the properties to leverage them for loans. Because of the unclear titles, displacement of the residents is also a common issue in their properties. Churches and schools on land without clear title also have difficulty qualifying for loans, grants or being listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A new partnership with The Texas A&M University School of Law will address the gap in education among Freedom Colony descendants about estate planning, land retention, and legal status. Intended to be a training session the webinars will be accompanies by fact sheets about property rights, historic preservation, and transfer of property.

The University of Texas School of Law hosted a clinic in Jasper County that was focused on helping to preserve the area as a Freedom Colony. The clinic helped the Community Family Historical Preservation Association (CFHPA) change its status from a limited liability company to a non-profit organization and helped to draft its founding documents and apply for federal tax exemptions. The UT law students also conducted some workshops on legal issues related to protecting the ownership of their land.

The UT School of Law also hosted an Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic on protecting and preserving African-American Cemeteries and developed a corresponding information booklet. The booklet describes cemetery research, applying for a historic cemetery designation, obtaining a historic marker, and registering the cemetery with the Texas Historic Sites Atlas. The document also provides information on forming organizations to protect and maintain the cemetery.

Recognition & Designation National Register of Historic Places Listing and registering Freedom Colonies as cultural properties in the National Register affords recognition as well as access to technical assistance. Listed properties also qualify for various federal grant programs for planning and rehabilitation, federal income tax credits, and preservation easements incentives tied to donations to nonprofit organizations. In addition, while National Register districts aren’t protected from local demolition laws, they are an important step toward protecting a sense of place and unity among property owners.

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There are currently 77 listings on the National Register of Historic Places associated with the designation subcategory Ethnic: Black Heritage in Texas. Of those, 21 are located within known Freedom Colonies.

Listings in the table below are organized by property type, Freedom Colony location, county, and nearest major city. A majority of the listings were Districts (9) followed by rural and urban homesteads (7), schools (2), a church (1), a park (1) and (1) a business.

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Official Texas Historical Markers Markers help to recognize Freedom Colonies and their Landscapes. State historical markers provide legitimacy to places of local and state historic significance. Markers also often mean that preservation efforts are more successful because they give assurance to grant funders, officials, and the general public that the area is documented, has historical significance, and has the support of a local, grassroots community. There are hundreds of markers throughout the state recognizing African American heritage. However, the markers listed below are only those associated with or located within a Freedom Colony, and directly related to that community’s heritage.

The distribution of the 67 markers includes 26 recognizing communities (or Freedom Colonies), 17 markers for churches, 17 for cemeteries related to Freedom Colony heritage, six (6) designating schools, and one (1) honoring a historic district.

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Part 3: Preservation and Interpretation Site Interpretation

Site interpretation is a tool to get visitors involved in the activities or engage in the learning experience of the place they are exploring. Site interpretation needs to be easy to understand and easily accessible to the visitor. It should be informative and connect visitors to the place. Site interpretation should be aim to be authentic and to inform in ways that impact the visitors and leave long lasting appreciation for the site.

Site Interpretation Case Studies

The following case studies represent varied approaches to site or district interpretation and preservation of Freedom Colonies. The three examples are associated with the 1867 Settlement near Texas City, the Shankleville community in Newton County, and Freedmen’s Town Historic District in Houston, The 1867 Settlement Historic District In the 1867 Settlement Historic District in Texas City, descendants who own property give trail ride tours through the district. Interpretive kiosks have been created and are spread throughout the community for visitors to learn more.

The 1867 Settlement Historic District is the only Reconstruction-era African American community in Galveston County. The founding families’ patriarchs were African American cowboys. They financed property purchase with money earned driving cattle up the Chisholm Trail to Kansas. Many descendants of the original pioneers still reside or own property within the historic community boundaries. Site interpretation includes tours and interpretative kiosks located throughout the district.

Shankleville Purple Hull Pea Festival The Shankleville Freedom Colony in Newton County hosts an annual “Texas Purple Hull Pea Festival” at the historic A.T. and Addie Odom Homestead. The festival celebrates the cultural traditions in agriculture and food related to the Southeast Texas region, and more specifically the Shankleville community. This type of program provides a great opportunity for visitors to learn about the Freedom Colony’s history and legacy, and to raise funds for ongoing preservation and stewardship initiatives.

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Freedmen’s Town Historic District Freedmen’s Town Historic District is located in the Fourth Ward in Houston. The African American Library, located at the Fourth Ward’s Gregory Lincoln School, is used to teach visitors about the history of the area. Though gentrification and the decline of historic buildings have greatly compromised the architectural integrity of the area, the Gregory Lincoln School’s exhibits provide a space in which archival materials associated with local heritage can be displayed and preserved.

The Gregory Lincoln School is the site of the African American Library located in the historic Fourth Ward (Freedmen’s Town) in Houston. The school is surrounded by ongoing development, which encroaches on the remaining historic churches and houses.

Reading List Sitton, T., & Conrad, J. H. (2005). Freedom Colonies: independent Black Texans in the time of Jim Crow. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Roberts, A., & Biazar, M. J. (2019). Black Placemaking in Texas: Sonic and Social Histories of Newton and Jasper County Freedom Colonies. Current Research in Digital History, 2, 5–6. doi: 10.31835/crdh.2019.06 Roberts, Andrea. (2017). Documenting and Preserving Texas Freedom Colonies. Texas Heritage Magazine. 2. 14.

Smith, G. (2020, February 1). Discovering My Roots Down Home. The Bullock Texas State History Museum. https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/discover/texas-story-project/down-home Barr, A. (1996). Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528-1995. University of Oklahoma Press.

Mears, M. M. (2009). And Grace Will Lead Me Home: African American Freedmen Communities of Austin, Texas, 1865-1928. Texas Tech University Press.

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Hopewell Freedom Colony at Bassett Farms Conservancy By: Evan R. Thompson, Executive Director, Preservation Texas Bassett Farms Conservancy, property of Preservation Texas, is a historic 2,400-acre farm and ranch located southeast of Waco. Preservation Texas is in the process of rehabilitating Bassett Farms Conservancy to become a statewide preservation training center. Visit bassettfarms.org to learn more.

Approximately 300 acres of Bassett Farms Conservancy was the site of Hopewell, a Freedom Colony established by 1875. This article summarizes current research findings.

On December 3, 1875, two former slaves, Henry Jefferson and William Moton, purchased 193 acres on Sulphur Creek in eastern Falls County, Texas.

They paid $1,032 in gold for what would later be described as sticky, poorly drained land. Jefferson and Moton had known each other for some years, having registered to vote together eight years earlier in Marlin, the county seat, on July 22, 1867.

Jefferson was later ordained as a Baptist minister in 1869 and founded Hopewell Baptist Church that same year. A physical church would eventually be built near their farms at Hopewell, about 15 miles east of Marlin; it is no longer standing.

Three other black farmers and their families would join them, making payments on small farms carved out of the 193-acre tract: Robert “Bob” Green, Dred Williams, and Edmund Taylor. Rev. Jefferson’s son, Anderson, also purchased a small plot of land adjacent to the 193-acre tract. Surrounding tracts of land would later be home to other small blackowned farms or rented to sharecroppers who were later buried at Hopewell Cemetery.

Henry Jefferson’s headstone is located in the Hopewell Cemetery.

Green, Williams and Taylor moved to the Hopewell community from nearby Duck Creek in Robertson County, where they had spent their first years as free men after Emancipation in 1865 until about 1870. Williams had both been owned by Aleck Gammill, a planter in Pickens County, Alabama and adjacent Noxubee County, Mississippi who died in Pass Christian in 1861. Gamill had acquired Bob Green after he was sold out of the Green family in Virginia “because he would not be whipped.”

In the spring of 1862, several months after the death of Aleck Gammill in Pass Christian, plans were made to move the Gammill slaves to Louisiana. It was at this time that Bob Green and Dred Williams, along with Jerry Chambers (who had been a slave with the famed black Mormon pioneer, Samuel Chambers), Archie Vance, Jerry Walker and Alex Wilson, along with a number of others, escaped to freedom.

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As Aleck’s daughter Amanda Gammill recalled many years later, “[In the] spring of 1862 some fifteen of our negroes left our plantation and went with a man named Jim Bullina and enlisted on some steamboat there at Pass Christian, this boat used to be called Creole before the war but after the Yankees captured her they changed her into a gunboat and also changed her name but I do not know what the name of the gunboat was.” The gunboat was the U.S.S. Morning Light. The Gammill family knew that their slaves were on the ship, but were powerless to act.

The USS Morning Light was sunk off of Sabine Pass.

In January 1863, the ship was sunk off of Sabine Pass during a Confederate attempt to break the Union blockade of Galveston. An explosion wounded Jerry Chambers, who lost most of the vision in one eye. The sailors were captured and the African-Americans (including Benjamin Drummond, the first patient in Washington, D.C.’s Old Naval Hospital when it opened in 1866; their Emancipation Day celebration is named for him) were separated and sent to prison in Houston under the management of the Confederate Negro Labor Bureau.

Jack Gammill, the brother of the late owner of these “runaways” sailors who had now become Confederate prisoners, also lived in Noxubee Co. and knew them. Jack Gammill had refugeed with his slaves to Texas in 1863 on a plantation owned by his brother-in-law Dr. W. L. Golson and another relative, G. C. Richardson. Gammill would eventually learn of the fate of the Morning Light and the whereabouts of his brother’s former slaves. They arranged for Dr. Golson to move them out of prison to the Golson/Richardson plantation on Duck Creek for the duration of the war.

It was on Duck Creek where, in 1864, while still enslaved, Bob Green married Martha King, one of Jack Gammill’s refugeed slaves. Jack had purchased Martha in 1844 to be the wife of his slave named Jim King. ( Jim also escaped slavery, stealing Jack’s horse during the move to Texas and eventually entering into Union service during which he died). For many years into the early 20th century, Martha remained in contact with the Gammill family, often visiting with Jack’s daughter Georgiana (Gammill) Ward in Marlin (whose husband would be sheriff of Falls County during a period of lynchings).

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The Dred Williams Cabin still stands as of 2020.

After Emancipation, Dred Williams married another slave, Lorena Preston, who came from the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Edmond Taylor had known both Williams and Green in Alabama during slavery, and may have been a slave on the Golson or Richardson plantations. After spending a number of years post- Emancipation on Duck Creek, Green, Williams and Taylor and their families found their way to Hopewell.

Back at Hopewell, Rev. Henry Jefferson set aside land for the Hopewell Cemetery on one of his two tracts of land and the first burials probably took place by about 1875. Soon, Hopewell Baptist Church would be built on an adjacent parcel, with the trustees (William Moton, Anderson Jefferson and Sloan Jones) taking title to the property for $10 from a Confederate veteran, L.T. Whitlow, on March 17, 1887 (the church had already been built by that time).

Hopewell School was built nearby and members of the community, including Anderson Jefferson, served as trustees. It was closed soon after 1900 and consolidated with another community school at Blue Ridge. School records giving the numbers of students and names of teachers with their pay are still extant in the Falls County Courthouse.

The first of the farmers to die at Hopewell was Dred Williams on 1 August 1877. In 1878, his widow “Rena” and children took title to the farm as the “Heirs of Dred Williams.” Ownership of the property is still recorded in Falls County as “Heirs of Dred Williams.” Rena remarried the following year to a hostler, Joe Jones. Jones was the driver for Kosse’s country doctor, Dr. W. C. Blalock and was long remembered in the community.

Bob Green died in July 1888, dropping dead in his cotton patch. His family and neighbors “had to scuffle around” to pay for the coffin from “Mr. White” in Kosse. Anderson Jefferson helped to dress him and placed him in the coffin. Martha never remarried, living off of the modest rental

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income paid to her by her sons and neighbors who tended the property, and paying the taxes by periodically selling livestock and eggs. Bob’s death was recorded in his step-son’s Bible, published by the American Bible Society in 1870, as July 17, 1888. Just four days earlier, Dr. Blalock recorded a visit from Bob Green and charged him $3.00 for his examination and medicine.

In later years, Martha secured a Union widow’s pension from the federal government. Testimony in support of her application came from neighbors, from members of the Gammill family, and from her husband’s fellow sailor, Jerry Chambers, who lived nearby in Kosse. Martha died in 1914, and the land that she owned (36.6 acres and an additional 30 acres purchased by her husband in 1883) was sold by her heirs to their neighbor, Mrs. Hattie Ford Bassett. Her family remained in the community, and most were buried at Hopewell Cemetery.

Left: The Hopewell Cemetery is located on the Bassett Farms Conservancy property.

Right: The site of the Hopewell Church is now an empty field.

Rev. Henry Jefferson died on June 18, 1889 and has a headstone in Hopewell Cemetery. In addition to his 58-acre portion (in two parcels) of the 193-acre tract, he acquired additional land: 13.7 acres in 1878; 25.7 acres in 1881 and 13.72 acres in 1882. Struggling with debt, in 1896 his widow deeded two of the tracts to her sons Jack and Anderson Jefferson. Debt repayment schedules were repeatedly amended and extended until finally by 1904 all of the Henry Jefferson property had been consolidated into the ownership of neighboring landowner, Mrs. Hattie Ford Bassett.

In 1903, son Anderson Jefferson and his wife Joannah sold their own 28.7 acre farm to Mrs. Hattie Ford Bassett and moved to Purcell, Oklahoma. William Moton sold out a bit earlier. On October 4, 1900, while living at Velsaco, Brazoria Co., Texas, William and his wife Mary C. sold their two parcels totaling 43.7 acres to self-made Falls County land speculator George S. Cousins for $200. Cousins sold the property to Mrs. Hattie Ford Bassett for $200 and the “taxes due thereon for the year 1904” on February 2, 1904. The Motons later moved to Purcell, Oklahoma where they were last found enumerated in the census in 1910.

Edmond (sometimes Edward) Taylor purchased his 36.6 acre farm at Hopewell for $168 on November 11, 1878. But he was not a Baptist, and in 1883 he was one of five trustees who purchased land for the Long Branch ME Church in nearby Alto Springs (the cemetery was recently recognized with a state historical marker). Shortly after 1900, Taylor and his wife sold out to Mrs. Hattie Ford Bassett and moved to Dallas. Some of Taylor’s descendants remained as tenant farmers at Hopewell. In total, 164 acres of the original 193-acre Hopewell tract became part of Bassett Farms.

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For many years, Dred Williams’s grandson B.D. Jones worked as the Bassett family handyman until his death in 1999. His family home still stands, too: a one story, two-room board-and-batten house with a collapsing porch and an overgrown yard full of rusting farm implements, two log outbuildings and a well -- and a second, collapsing one-story house a short distance away. The 29acre property is still owned by the heirs of Dred Williams.

Hopewell Cemetery is still in active, although very infrequent use. It is well marked and can theoretically be accessed from the main highway connecting Kosse and Marlin, Highway 7. To date, 92 burials have been identified both from headstones and from searches of Texas death records. The cemetery has grown up in tall grasses and has never been properly recorded. Many of the burials are unmarked by headstones. Some are hand made out of concrete, with the handle of an outdoor faucet pressed into the surface to make a floral design.

Hopewell Church collapsed in recent years and its remains were removed. The property is still owned by the church organization. All that survives on the small site is a commemorative plaque put up by B.D. Jones in the 1980s, the well and an outhouse. A family member in Mexia still has the church records. The nearby school is gone as well, and is thought to have been on the same site.

Preservation Texas seeks to fully document and preserve the cultural and historical legacy of Hopewell long-term, through research, archaeological field schools, educational programs, and (through the possible lease/ownership of the Williams-Jones property) restoration of the sole surviving architectural assets of the community. It is an important historic site that can be used to teach Texans about Reconstruction Era history and the story of Freedom Colonies.

A circa 1900 map showing the location of the Hopewell School

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