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Sweet Home
"The outstanding Black commmunity in the U.S."
Sweet Home is located a mile west of Farm Road 467, eight miles southwest of Seguin in southern Guadalupe County, and established by former slaves before 1866. In 1861, desirous of improving their conditions, a few young men free and enslaved met in a private residence in Louisville Kentucky and formed the Benevolent Society of Kentucky. The order was a benevolent and social organization comprised of “colored” members. With its genesis as a local benevolent society the organization grew rapidly, and many were added to its membership.
Following the Civil War in 1866, free man of color, Claiborne Clay gained employment with the Freedmen’s Bureau on 19 January 1866 in Tennessee. On 3 March 1865, Congress passed a bill authorizing the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau and President Lincoln signed the bill the same day. By June 1867, Clay traveled to Independence Texas to register to vote. Independence was in Washington County about twelve miles northeast of Brenham and in 1835 in Austin's colony of Anglo-Americans.
The town became a Baptist religious and educational center of the Republic of Texas and in 1845 the first site of Baylor University and the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor. The wealthiest community in Texas in 1845, Independence declined later in the century after refusing to give a right-of-way to the Santa Fe Railroad. Its residents included many prominent people of early Texas history, including Sam Houston while he was a U.S. Senator and where the Houston family were well-known members of the Independence Baptist Church.
Kentucky Clay in the County
By 1870, Claiborne Clay moved to Guadalupe County along with his wife the former Martha Miller, a free woman of color from Kentucky and purchased land to become a farmer. The Clay’s had a long-term personal relationship with Cassius Clay, a planter, politician, military officer, and abolitionist who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 1863 to 1869.
On February 7, 1868, a charter was approved within the Benevolent Society of Kentucky which organized lodges under it and authorized them to begin to correspond with various societies and individuals for that purpose. Although it would be three years before the charter would be operative, favorable responses were received and the name “United Brothers of Friendship” was adopted by the Society.
In Guadalupe County, location was established at Sweet Home around 1870. His wife Martha held membership in the “Sisters of the Mysterious Ten” the women’s benevolent society whose members supported one another and dedicated themselves to racial progress. The 1870 Census would reflect a significant number of “well-to-do” black business owners, teachers, and laborers living and working in the city of Seguin. Outside of the city in the country, were a large and growing number of over 65 black farmers who owned their own land proper.
Rise of the Baptist Church
In organizing new churches after the Civil War, blacks usually found Northern missionaries, both black and white, to assist and support them. Baptist theology, worship, and ecclesial structure appealed strongly to the newly freed people. The Baptists’ egalitarian views on redemption and baptism by total immersion was particularly attractive. Baptists believed that salvation was available to all that repented their sins, a thought that seemed to partially compensate for worldly hardship and injustice. Baptism in creeks and rivers dramatized sinner’s spiritual death and rebirth as a Christian.
The Sweet Home Baptist Church was established in 1864 under the shade of a Live Oak Tree by free slaves in Guadalupe, County, Texas. When the first church was destroyed by vandals, German immigrant Ben E. Stein gave the community 5 acres of land on which to build a church and school. Their first service was under a tree where they managed to build a brush arbor and prayed until a church was built in 1913 in the “Baptist Settlement” and the Second Baptist Church was founded in Seguin on November 16, 1865.
Reverend Leonard Ilsley, a white Methodist minister, and William B. Ball, a teacher and former Buffalo soldier who pastored the church from 1886 to 1923. The church became the backbone of the black community; developing, promoting, and financing educational programs, and providing financial and legal support to assist and support the black community through post slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and continued systematic racism. By 1890 black Baptists totaled 111,138 statewide, and in 1916, 72 percent of the state's black churchgoers were Baptists.
Community Notables
There were many notable community members living at Sweet Home and in the early 1900s, Farm and Ranch Magazine deemed Sweet Home "The Outstanding Black Community in the United States."
Joseph Williams was born on April 6, 1865, in Seguin, Texas. Nicknamed "Cyclone Joe" and "Smokey Joe" he became a right-handed pitcher in Negro League Baseball considered one of the greatest pitchers of all-time. With one of his parents black and the other a Comanche Native American, he was barred by the color line. He spent his entire 27-year career from 1905–1932 pitching in the Negro leagues, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
Texas folk artist John Willard Banks was a self-taught black folk artist born on November 7, 1912, in Sweet Home. At the age of five his parents took him to San Antonio, but by the age of nine, they divorced, and John returned to his grandparents' farm. Whether his subjects were religious or rural, they took place in lush landscapes, often with tree-lined rivers flowing through the composition. Depictions are of rural community life often etched from the people, places, and events surrounding Sweet Home and Jakes Colony and are included in several images on this site.
Jakes Colony
oldest black-owned ranch in texas
Jakes Colony was located nine miles south of Seguin in southern Guadalupe County and was established by former slaves on hundreds of acres of prime land. In 1850, there were reportedly only 10 black-owned farms throughout the state of Texas and around 17 farms by 1860. There were reportedly 240 residents that included over 70 farm or ranch owners and some tenants living in Sweet Home and Jakes Colony in 1870. Between 1856 and 1874, Seguin and the county saw the cattle industry help greatly in its economic recovery.
The war years had seen the Texas Longhorn and mutations virtually ignored and as a result, were left to their own devices and rapidly increased in numbers. Former Confederate Captain J.F. Ellison drove over 100,000 head north around 1866 and on his first and subsequent drives out, employed all “Negro” cowboys, bossed by one of their own, Emmanuel Jones. The community included the Wilcox Ranch established around 1868. From 1870 onward, the Wilcox Farm and Ranch established in 1865 become a leader in the cattle industry in South Texas utilizing black, white, and Tejano cowhands.
Distinguished Visitors
Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and many other prominent black leaders befriended members of the community and developed close personal and business relationships. George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. Born a slave in 1854, he was the most prominent black scientist of the early 20th century and while a professor at the Tuskegee Institute, developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton.
Carver wanted black farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life. Traveling to and from San Antonio to Seguin, and farm-to-farm, Carver would spend many of his long-term and overnight stays at the Wilcox Ranch in Jakes Colony at the “family home.” The Wilcox Ranch is the oldest and last black-owned working ranch in Jakes Colony and today, the 152-year-old Wilcox Ranch is the oldest and last in the settlement.
Capote Hills
Hiram Wilson and Co. | Potters
Cattleman Michael H. Erksine from Virginia bought the Capote Hills Ranch in the early 1840. Erksine was active in the early organization and development of Seguin and was elected chief justice. Prospering in the cattle industry at Capote Ranch, by 1854 he drove a herd of cattle to California. Erksine later became involved in mining ventures for a while but returned to the ranch in 1859 to assume raising cattle. He drove a herd to New Orleans in 1861 and during the return trip, died at New Iberia, Louisiana in May 1862.
The First Wilson Slave Potters
In 1857, John McKamey Wilson, a Presbyterian minister and educator, moved to Capote Hills with his family and slaves and established the first “Wilson” pottery, which produced utilitarian alkaline-glazed and salt-glazed stoneware through the Civil War years. Wilson was born in Meclinberg County, North Carolina around 1805 from a long line of Scottish-Irish Presbyterians that included Frances MaKemie, credited with introducing Presbyterianism to America. Family friends included Andrew Jackson, who was born in the home of his great-uncle and was a playmate of his father’s. During the American Revolution, Mrs. Jackson and their sons took refuge from the British in the home of his grandparents.
In 1856, the Wilson’s arrived in Texas with their eleven children and nineteen slaves, and Wilson became the second minister of the Seguin Presbyterian Church. Wilson was later appointed headmaster of the Female Academy of Guadalupe College where his scientific interests led him to begin producing stoneware pottery for food preservation. Though reportedly a staunch Confederate, he trained his slaves to work as potters and taught them to read and write. The Civil War disrupted the lives of all the potters in Capote. Leaving their slaves in charge of the farm and pottery operations, Wilson and his two oldest sons Edward and Alexander reported for duty in North Carolina.
Hiram Wilson and Co.
Wilson returned to the county and continued work as both a potter and farmer. Once the troops went home and the slaves were freed, John Wilson sold his interest in Wilson Potteries and three of his former slaves broke away from the new owner and started their own pottery. The Hiram Wilson Potters began their production of stoneware around 1865 in Capote Hills of Guadalupe County on the outskirts of Seguin, Texas.
Hiram Wilson assumed a role in Capote like that of his former master in Seguin upon returning from the war and started a church and a school, as well as pottery. Hiram Wilson established his pottery business while starting a school and church and bought acres of land in the area, setting aside ten acres for the purpose of building Capote Baptist Church where he served as minister. The church property was additionally used as a schoolhouse until 1897, when a separate building was built to educate the many children enrolled.
The vessels made at the Wilson potteries represented both the westward extension of the Old South culture and the interaction of the various cultural groups prevalent in the county at the time. Its product combined attributes that can be traced to the earlier Wilson pottery, such as vessel shape and the use of a groundhog kiln, along with some idiosyncratic additions, such as a new type of rim and handle. Hiram and Company only made salt-glazed ware and always marked the vessels with the company's name, a practice not followed by most contemporaries. H. Wilson and Company went out of business about the time of Hiram's death in 1884.
Guadalupe College
The Race Question Solved
W.E.B. Du Bois was a fellow activist, friend, and contemporary of Abner's who insisted on full civil rights, increased political representation, and a formal education for blacks which he believed would be brought about by the black intellectual elite. Abner and the graduates of Guadalupe College were counted amongst the group Du Bois coined as the “Talented Tenth,” a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift and belief that blacks needed the chances for advanced education to develop their leadership. Du Bois was an advocate for Guadalupe College, which offered a traditional liberal arts program based on classical courses and comparatively little agricultural or trades-based education at the time.
Distinguished Graduates
Guadalupe College flourished remarkably during Professor Abner’s fifteen-year tenure and attracted attention throughout the state and country. The Suttons were arguably the most influential black family in Texas in the first half of the 20th century. Samuel Johnson (S.J.) Sutton was born the son of a free slave Samuel Sutton in Richmond, Virginia. Despite his illiteracy, his father started a newspaper for which his son Samuel Jr. wrote. After one article denouncing the racism of the school board, an article that offended some whites, the younger Sutton heeded his father’s advice to leave Richmond before harm came his way. Sutton operated a gold mine in Mexico before moving to San Antonio to become an educator at Guadalupe College, in Seguin.
While there, he met another young teacher, Lillian V. Smith, a Mulatto from New Orleans in 1896. Mrs. Sutton taught at Riverside, San Antonio’s first black high school. The family also owned a mattress factory, a skating rink and funeral home and in 1912 bought an 85-acre farm on Sinclair Road. Over the next several years, they courted, got married, and settled on the East Side of San Antonio to start a family. As prominent figures in the community, they often hosted luminaries like Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall.
Their children, having no distant family in their lives; had personalities like George Washington Carver that became surrogate play “aunts and uncles.” Carver would visit the San Antonio home and farm in the country, or visit and consult with farmers and ranchers, or act as instructor and honorary guest at the famed Guadalupe College. Percy, the youngest of the Sutton’s 12 children, served in World War II with the Tuskegee Airmen, and after the war became Malcolm X’s attorney, Borough President of Manhattan, and the head of a business empire that included ownership of the Apollo Theater.
Industrial Education Prevails
Conflicts with trustees resulted in his resignation in 1906 and W.B. Ball was appointed as his successor. Supporters of the school began to embrace the industrial education model promoted by Booker T. Washington and long-term financial contributor philanthropist George W. Brackenridge of San Antonio in 1914. The school moved from its location in downtown Seguin to the Guadalupe River farm property. Brackenridge, who favored expansion of the vocational program, contributed funds for the construction of two modern brick buildings. On February 9, 1936, a fire destroyed the main building and resulted in a fatal blow.
Seguin, Texas
leading white citizens of the state of texas and seguin on guadalupe college, c.1900.
The writers intended that the publication reflected the great work in its infancy and that the influence of Guadalupe College would be felt throughout the South. Many of the interviews were condensations of more elaborate and praiseworthy statements that were briefed in order that they might be condensed for publication in pamphlet form and representative of the sentiments of the entire population of Seguin.
Hon. J. B. Dibrell, state senator and one of the leading citizens of the Texas bar:
“It is a marvelous institution. There is not another like it in Texas, or the South. It is a model college for both white and black. The discipline is perfect, and the scholars turned out from there can be detected anywhere by their intelligence and politeness. Professor Abner has accomplished a wonderful work.”
Prof. H. G. B. Goseman, editor Seguin Zietung (German) and for fifteen years president of board of e
“From an educational standpoint, I can say that the Guadalupe College will rank with any institution of the kind in the South. It has improved greatly in the past few years in learning and arts, and especially music. As chairman of the board of examiners of Guadalupe County, I had occasion to pass upon the work of the college in many instances, and they are well up in science, and successfully and creditably passed their examination as teachers.”
C. E. Tips, president of First National Bank:
“Prof. David B. Abner has achieved remarkable success in the management of Guadalupe College. The good behavior of the pupils is something wonderful. As a teacher, and as a business manager, the wonderful amount of work, splendid buildings and improvements shows for itself. All business relations between this bank and the Guadalupe College have been of a most agreeable nature.”
Dr. T. W. Moore, practicing physician, and ex-superintendent of the Austin asylum:
“It is a good school, and the result of its work is evidence of the ability of the teachers, not only in the way of direct education, but art. I have seen some beautiful work turned out by the pupils that would have been a credit to anybody.”
George P. Holloman, city marshal:
“I have held the position of city marshal of Seguin eight years and there has never been a complaint of any character made to me relative to the conduct of any pupil of the college during that period of time.”
Prof. Jesse Williams, superintendent of public instruction of Guadalupe County:
“I join in the recommendation of this school to the state board for its recognition as a school of first rank. I can say that their work is first-class, and the leading teachers of this county are graduates of Guadalupe College. It has been the greatest help we have had in solving the race problem in this section, and more schools of the kind would solve it throughout the South. Their work will rank with any college, socially, morally, and intellectually.
Ex-Gov. Charles A. Culberson:
“I have visited Seguin and Guadalupe College, and have heard the citizens thereof speak in nothing but the highest terms of its work. The location is good, and it is doing a good work and is worthy of the support of the people.”."
Ferd Klein, proprietor Klein’s Opera House:
“I have lived within a stone’s throw of the college since its establishment and can say its order is perfect. If all negroes were like those turned out from the Guadalupe College, there would never be any race problem to discuss.”
Walter Nolte, of Nolte & Sons bankers:
“I have had considerable business relations with Professor David B. Abner since the establishment of Guadalupe College, and all matters have been conducted in a business-like manner. I can say the same of many of the pupils turned out by the college, and all the business relations between the bank and the attendants at the college have been of most pleasant and satisfactory nature. He is a good businessman as well as instructor.”
Galveston and Dallas News (c.1906): The “Negro Problem” Solved:
“It might be further added that the influence and effect of this college is not confined to the pupils, but in the city of Seguin there had not been a shooting, a trouble of any kind between negroes and whites in years., regardless of the city, besides its own large colored population, draws trade from probably 5.000 colored population in the county. There are few negro loafers in Seguin, and they are confined exclusively to the uneducated and ignorant class. In the city and county there are hundreds of negroes who own homes, and in several instances, they are heavy contributions to the revenues in their government.”