DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker for Mount Pleasant C.M.E. Church in Houston County tells it like this, and I'm gonna do my level best to honor that telling. Now, before 1885, Methodist worship had already been taking root among African Americans in that part of East Texas.
Long organized, long lived. So when the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of America put down its flag locally, it wasn't starting from nothing — it was giving a name and a home to something that had been growin all along. That home became Mount Pleasant C.M.E.
Church, founded in 1885. Here's where the story gets specific, and specific is where stories get interesting. A man named T.
H. Nelms — and you want to remember that name — deeded two acres of his former plantation land to the church. Former plantation land.
Let that settle for a moment. The same ground that once held one kind of story was now being handed over, by deed, for an entirely different one. The trustees who received that land were S.
Quantrell, J. Oneil, Sr., and A. Berry.
Three men entrusted with two acres and a future. The Reverend Peter Steward stepped in as the first pastor. And that little church building did double duty in those early years — the Fodice school held its classes right there inside those walls, until about 1900.
A congregation and a classroom sharing the same roof. That's a community making the most of what it has. By 1901 they raised up a second building.
Fresh timber, fresh start. That building served the congregation faithfully, year after year, decade after decade — until the spring of 1941, when a tornado came through and destroyed it. Not damaged.
Destroyed. Spring can be cruel in Texas, and that year it was. But Mount Pleasant didn't vanish with the boards and the beams.
The congregation continued. Continues, in fact. A proud heritage of worship — that's what the marker says, and those aren't just words carved in stone for decoration.
And carved into the base of that marker, in memory, is a name: Louise Jefferson Davis Davis, nineteen twenty-seven to nineteen ninety-five. Remembered. Set in stone alongside the church she was part of.
Some stories are about land, and some are about faith, and the best ones are about how those two things refuse to be separated. Mount Pleasant C.M.E. Church is one of those stories.
What the marker says
Though Methodist worship had long been organized among area African Americans, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of America was founded locally as Mount Pleasant C. M. E. Church in 1885. T. H. Nelms deeded two acres of his former plantation land to church trustees S. Quantrell, J. Oneil, Sr., and A. Berry. The Rev. Peter Steward was first pastor. The Fodice school met in the church building until about 1900. A second building, erected in 1901, served until it was destroyed by a spring tornado in 1941. The Mount Pleasant congregation continues a proud heritage of worship. (1998) Incise on base: In Memory: Louise Jefferson Davis Davis (1927-1995)