DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker records about the Webberville Ebenezer Baptist Church, out here in Travis County. Now, every story has to start somewhere, and this one starts with a man trying to outrun something uglier than any Texas weather — racism. John F.
Webber was Anglo American. His wife was African American. And in 1839, when they packed up their family and came to settle in this sparsely populated stretch of Texas, they weren't pioneering for adventure.
They were fleeing the racism they had already lived through in towns and cities. That's not a small thing to carry. They put down roots, and around them grew a community called Webber Prairie — plantation owners and their slaves, carved out of land that must have felt, to the Webbers, like the edge of the known world.
But the world has a way of followin' you. Racial prejudice caught up with John F. Webber, and in 1851 it pressed hard enough that he sold his land to a Colonel John Banks and moved his family all the way to Mexico.
Just... gone. Pushed out of the country they'd tried to make a home in. And the land sat.
And the years passed. And then, in 1868, something shifted. A man named Matthew Duty donated one acre right here — one acre — specifically for the purpose of building a church for the area's recently emancipated African Americans.
One acre, but what grew on it was something else entirely. That same year, 1868, the Webberville Ebenezer Baptist Church was organized, coming into being as a mission of the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association.
Charter members — the people who said yes first, who put their names to this thing before it was anything but a hope — included Thomas Reads, Suns Johnson, Lowens Berry, and Mary Green. The Reverend Wesley Barrow stepped up as Ebenezer's first pastor. A congregation born on donated land, organized in the shadow of emancipation, led by a reverend and anchored by members whose names the marker still carries.
The church held. Decades rolled through. Then in 1956, several members of the congregation left Ebenezer Baptist to form a church over in Austin — a church that became known as the New Light Ebenezer Baptist Church.
A branch off the original branch. And still, Ebenezer Baptist remains active. Webberville's families have scattered to nearby urban centers over the years, but those former members keep comin' back — on special occasions, on holidays.
You leave a place, but some places don't quite let you leave. What started as one man's desperate move to find a corner of Texas where his family could simply exist — that story eventually became a church that's still standing. One acre, four charter members, one first pastor, and a community that refused to disappear.
The marker doesn't call that remarkable. It doesn't have to.
What the marker says
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)