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Few
town names in East Texas
attract as much curiosity as Weeping
Mary, a 140-year-old black community hidden away in the deep woods
of western Cherokee
County.
Located on County Road 2907, off Texas Highway 21, five miles west
of Alto, Weeping
Mary was first settled after the Civil War by freed slaves from
neighboring plantations.
It’s name reportedly came from the 20th chapter of John, where Mary
goes to the tomb of Jesus after he was crucified:
“...and when she had thus said, she turned herself back and saw Jesus
standing, and knew not that it was not Jesus. Jesus saith unto her,
Woman, why weepest thou. Whom seekest thou...”
After settling in the woods, the first effort of the free slaves of
Weeping Mary
was to establish a Baptist church, the Church of Weeping Mary, which
has expanded over the years. |
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The
Weeping Mary Baptist Church
Photo courtesy Andrew Hardaway |
The next effort
of the slaves was to established a school in 1896, when it had an
enrollment of about forty. The school, however, was closed around
the time of World
War II and, today, the few children of the community are bussed
to schools in Alto.
In the 1960s, we visited with Newell Ross, 60, a deacon in the church
with his brothers, David and Richmond.
“A long time ago, our church stood on a hill two or three miles up
the Neches River from here. Then the deacons decided to move it down
here, between Boles and White Oak creeks. Pretty soon, lots of folks
moved around the church. Now, we have about 200 people living here,”
said Ross.
Life at Weeping
Mary hasn’t been complicated by a city government, a business
district, fraternal orders or a post office, but it is surrounded
by history.
It rests on the back side of the Caddoan
Mounds State Historic Site, which comprises the southwesternmost
ceremonial center of the Caddoan people who flourished on the western
edge of the woodlands of eastern North America between 1000 B.C. and
A.D. 1550.
The site near Weeping
Mary consists of three large earthen mounds as well as a large
portion of a prehistoric village. Because of its proximity, the Caddoan
people likely lived and wandered over what would become Weeping
Mary.
Not far away is another historic site, the campsite of Zebulon Pike,
who camped here with his men in 1807.
Under commission from General James Wilkinson, governor of the Louisiana
Territory, the Pike party carried out an expedition to explore the
headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers and to report on Spanish
settlements in the New Mexico area.
Heading west from present-day Colorado, where the party saw the mountain
later named Pike’s Peak for the expedition’s leader, the explorers
were arrested by Spanish authorities.
Under escort back to the United States, the party camped near what
would become Weeping
Mary on June 14, 1807. The Pike expedition furnished an important
account of Spanish Texas and New Mexico.
Weeping Mary
is also within walking distance of El
Camino Real, also known as the King’s Highway and the Old Spanish
Trail. In East Texas,
the highway (now Texas Highway 21) runs from the Sabine River through
Milam, San
Augustine, Nacogdoches,
and Alto before reaching
the Neches River and continuing
westward to Crockett
and, eventually, San Antonio.
Today, Weeping
Mary is a cluster of rural homes reached by a rare iron bridge
spanning a creek shaded by tall oaks.
Nothing much happens here, but residents still remember a flood in
1957 when they had water 18 inches deep in their homes. “Like the
Bible’s Mary, we wept, but we’re still here, thank the Lord,” said
an elderly woman. |
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