The History of Shiloh Baptist Church, Longview Texas Part 2

The History of Shiloh Baptist Church, Longview Texas - Part 2 

Author Note: They say everyone learns something new everyday. That is so true- for I was not aware of the history of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Longview, Texas (White Oak area) until a couple of weeks ago, when my brother-in-law, the Rev. Robert Morgan Jr. was installed as the church's new pastor. So I decided to do a series on the rich history of the church. I will be posting more articles on the Black History in East Texas. Coming soon, I plan on doing an article on the Mayflower community and how it pertains to Black History.

The area around Shiloh was a part of Mexico in 1821. Many Cherokee families passed through the region during the following decade, having been pushed further west out of their original lands. The Cherokees were forced out of the region by 1839 as many Anglo-Americans arrived in the area as well as some African Americans, some of them enslaved. Through the mid-1800s, the region's main economic activity was cotton farming, and the lumber industry grew after the 1860s.

Shiloh was one of a number of Black communities to be settled in the county in the Reconstruction Era. According to local tradition, a formerly enslaved man, Butcher Christian, his former enslaver, Gideon Christian, and a noted post-Civil War church organizer, the Reverend John Baptist, established the Shiloh Baptist Church in 1871. Services began in a log sanctuary located on 3 acres (12,000 m²) donated by Butcher Christian. Gideon Christian, originally from South Carolina, had held thirty-two people enslaved in the area prior to the Civil War. According to the oral histories of local families, the Christian family conveyed land titles to a number of the emancipated people they had formerly held enslaved.
Adjacent to the Baptist Church is an active cemetery with marked graves dating to 1882. Shortly after the end of the Civil War, the newly free Black community established a one-room school in Shiloh that operated until the school was destroyed in a major storm in the 1890s. The Shiloh community built a new two-room school erected in 1920.

Revenues from oil discovered on church land were used to build a new sanctuary here in 1936.

By the 1960s, oil was the dominant industry of the region, and few farms remained. Shiloh School closed in 1966, when area schools were desegregated and children from Shiloh enrolled in White Oak Independent School District. The school building was later used for chemical storage until it was damaged in a 1993 chemical fire, possibly a result of arson. Shiloh's population declined after World War II. By the 1990s, the church and some of the early settling families remained, but much of the population had moved away. The building, on Shiloh Road, is marked by a historical plaque. Shiloh Baptist Church still serves the community with a variety of programs.

Source: Wikipedia