“A community of black farmers began to coalesce between Bear Creek and Slaughter Creek by the mid- to late-1870s. Among these pioneers were Ben Van Zandt, Chatham Perry, Richard Washington, and John Rose. These families were the core of the freedman community of Rose Colony, which later became the African American section of Manchaca, a town which sprang up after the railroad was extended from Austin to San Marcos in 1880. Other African American families who came to the Bear Creek-Rose Colony-Manchaca area were Alexander, Coats, Dodson, Dotson, Hargis, Hughes, Pickard, Owens, Scroggins, Slaughter, and Sorrells.

These first African American farmers in the Bear Creek-Rose Colony area were true pioneers. They were newly freed from bondage yet somehow managed to buy their own land. It was poor quality, upland farmland in a raw wilderness, but it was their land nonetheless. For the first time, they were able to make life decisions and govern themselves. They married with the assurance that their families would not be sold away. They owned their own land and labor. They formed their own associations—churches, schools, and fraternal organizations—for inspiration, education, and the betterment of their created community.

During the 20 years between Ransom Williams’ land purchase in 1871 and the arrival of the Dodsons in 1891, the pioneers of Bear Creek-Rose Colony joined together to form the framework for their own community, one of several hundred such “Freedmen’s Colonies” in Texas. In her book, And Grace Will Lead Me Home: African American Communities of Austin, Texas, 1865-1928, Michelle Mears states that rural freedmen formed remote, scattered, informal, and unofficial communities in rural areas throughout the state by the last years of the nineteenth century. This pioneer generation s\ucceeded in establishing a fledgling community for later African Americans who came to live in south Travis County.

In the 1870s, Ransom and Sarah Williams and their small children probably socialized with residents of the Antioch Colony, the freedmen settlement that had emerged in the Mountain City area during the late 1860s. The colony was 4.5 miles south of the Williams property, in northern Hays County. While some other African Americans lived on the east side of Onion Creek, the Antioch settlement was the only established freedmen’s community in northern Hays and southern Travis counties when Ransom and Sarah Williams first came to the farm. Comprising 12 to 15 extended families, the community provided a church, a school, and social opportunities that were unavailable to the Williams family in the Bear Creek community of the 1870s.