Houston Baptist
Houston Baptist Church and its adjoining cemetery were
organized in 1886 under the leadership of Reverend Ulysses L. Houston, minister of First Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah. A significant religious and political leader in the African-American community, Houston attended the meeting at Gen. Sherman's Savannah headquarters in January 1865 that resulted in Special Field Order No.15 ( the redistribution
of confiscated coastal land in forty- acre tracts to newly freed blacks). Houston also served a term in Georgia's Reconstruction legislature. Established in the tradition of earlier plantation praise houses intended to Christianize the enslaved populations of rural plantations, Houston Baptist Church served the African Americans of Rice Hope Plantation. Houston Baptist Church continued to serve the local community until the 1970s.
Marker is at the intersection of Augusta Road (State Highway 21) and Old Augusta Road (Old State Highway 21), on the right when traveling west on Augusta Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
