Hopewell
Falls County, TX
Status: Located
Year Established: 1875
Council of Governments: HOTCOG
Public History: There are no current descriptions related to Hopewell in the public record. If you are aware of any sources that we may have missed please share them with us.
Community History: “From “”Saving Texas Freedom Colonies”” (2020): “”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 black-owned farms or rented to sharecroppers who were later buried at Hopewell Cemetery…
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.””
At the turn of the 20th century, all of Henry Jefferson’s property, including the cemetery, was sold to a neighboring landowner, Mrs. Hattie Ford (Pope) Bassett (1851-1936). The 2,400-acre Bassett property was bequeathed to Preservation Texas in 2012. Preservation Texas manages the cemetery site as part of its Bassett Farms Conservancy.”
Cemetery: Hopewell Cemetary
Church: Hopewell Baptist Church