Mount Horeb Baptist Church
Peyton Colony, Texas
Peyton Colony was established as a freedmen’s community in 1865 by Peyton Roberts (c.1820-1888), an ex-slave who migrated to Caldwell County, Texas. Roberts was born enslaved on the William Roberts Plantation in Virginia. Roberts and several families on the Roberts Plantation gained their freedom at the end of the Civil War.
In late 1865, Peyton Roberts led these families to the Texas hill country eight miles southeast of the present-day town of Blanco. They homesteaded public land and built cabins on their new properties. Their small community, along Boardhouse Creek, became known as the Peyton Colony. Freed slaves came from throughout the South to form a unique community in Central Texas.
In the early-1870s, the first church was built there as well as a log cabin school. The old schoolhouse was the first black school in Blanco County.
In 1874, Rev. Jack Burch, a freedman from Tennessee, arrived in the Colony and pitched a tent for the first meeting of the Mt. Horeb Baptist Church. Jim Upshear, one of the colonists, donated land for a permanent site and the settlers built a log church, which also served as a community school. Part of the Colony site, now a state park, includes a cemetery with 176 graves, including Peyton Roberts and many of the original settlers.
The community of Peyton Colony no longer exists, but the Mt. Horeb Baptist Church stands a few hundred feet from the old schoolhouse and is still active.