Given’s Hill

Houston County, TX

Status: Located

Year Established: 1892

Council of Governments: DETCOG

Public History: There are no current descriptions related to Given’s Hill in the public record. If you are aware of any sources that we may have missed please share them with us.

Community History: THC Historical Marker for Givens Homesite: “Solomon George Givens and his wife Lula (Burleson), both born in Houston County in 1871, were the children of former slaves. They were married in Crockett in 1891, and in 1892 they bought 34 acres of land here. Their farm proved a success and in 1893 they built a large 8-room house at this site. The Givenses were noted for their charity and as leaders in the development of a nearby school and Baptist church; baptism services took place in a tank on their land. For many years, their home was the center of the African American farming community known as “Givens Hill.”

From “Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim Crow”: “The Givenses of Givens’s Hill settlement, Houston County, demonstrated the degree to which one founding family could sustain a community. The son and daughter of freedmen, Solomon and Lula Burleson Givens bought land a few miles south of the county seat of Crockett in 1892. They prospered, and a black community soon grew up around them, assisted by the four sons and one daughter who chose to live on the family farm all of their lives. Solomon and Lula helped found Pine Grove Baptist Church, where Solomon served for fifty years as superintendent of the Sunday school, church clerk, chairman of the deacon board, and president of the Home Mission Society. Lula taught in the Sunday school from the 1890s until her death in 1954 and played hostess to the long procession of visiting ministers who stayed in the Givenses’ big eight-room farmhouse. The Givens family helped their community in other ways. Solomon and his sons founded a local chapter of the Grand Lodge of Pythius, and Solomon served for many years as trustee of the nearby Reed’s Opening School. A ‘‘storm house’’ on the Givenses’ place, complete with bedding, food, and lamps, served as emergency shelter for the needy. Solomon, a skilled carpenter, assisted his neighbors whenever needed, while Lula Givens, her daughters, and her daughters-in-law made quilts and mattresses for the poor. Solomon and Lula helped their neighbors for a half century with generous gifts of garden vegetables, pork, eggs, milk products, firewood, and well water, and Solomon even built a small store and barber shop to serve his namesake community.”

Church: Pine Grove Baptist Church

School: Reed’s Opening School