Hopewell Freedom Colony

From 1875 through about 1915, approximately 250 acres of Bassett Farms was owned by formerly enslaved African-Americans as part of a freedom colony called Hopewell. Hopewell was settled by five Black farmers from Alabama and Mississippi who had been brought to Texas during the Civil War. At its height, the community included a Baptist church, a cemetery, a school, a masonic meeting hall, and a store. After nearly 100 years, the historic Hopewell Cemetery remains, and the former farmstead sites are now valuable repositories of archeological information about Reconstruction-era Black settlements.

The documentation, preservation, and interpretation of the Hopewell Freedom Colony as part of our new Center for Rural Heritage is a critically important project.

The headstone of Henry Jefferson located at Hopewell Cemetery.

Executive director of Preservation Texas, Evan Thompson, provides examples of archival resources used to learn more about Hopewell.