Wheatville

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Wheatville

Photographs of Wheatville from the Austin Files collection. Wheatville, the first Black community associated with Austin after the Civil War, was located at the western edge of Austin on former plantation land. The boundaries of Wheatville corresponded to present 24th Street to the south, 26th Street to the north, Shoal Creek to the west, and Rio Grande Street to the east. James Wheat, formerly enslaved, from Arkansas, brought his family to the area and founded the community in 1867. In 1869 he bought a plot of land at what is now 2409 San Gabriel Street and became Wheatville's first landowner. Wheat raised corn in a site now bounded by Guadalupe, West 24th, and San Gabriel streets. Wheatville residents worked mainly as domestics in White households, merchants in the community, and as semiskilled laborers in the Austin construction industry. A few blacksmiths lived in Wheatville, and some residents farmed and raised livestock. George Franklin, also formerly enslaved, and a carpenter, purchased land at the site of present-day 2402 San Gabriel in 1869 and constructed a stone building with walls four stones thick. Now known as the Franzetti building, it became the center of the community as subsequent owners used it to house families, grocery stores, various other businesses, and churches. Jacob Fontaine, a prominent Baptist minister, settled at Wheatville in the late 1860s. The St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association, organized by Fontaine and originally named the Travis County Association, convened at Wheatville in 1868. Fontaine and his family lived in the Franzetti building periodically from 1875 to 1898. In 1876 he used it for the office of the Austin Gold Dollar, an early Black newspaper. In 1889 Fontaine organized and opened the New Hope Baptist Church at the site. It moved to another location in Wheatville several years later. In 1904 the Pilgrim Home Baptist Church organized at Wheatville. The Wheatville community had what was probably an informal school in 1876, attended by sixty-six students. In 1877 the Travis County Court designated surplus building funds from its sixth district for the building of free public schools for African Americans. Two schools, one at Wheatville, the other in East Austin, were built. The Wheatville school opened in 1881. W. H. Passon, a prominent Black educator in Austin, served on the school staff and later became principal. In 1896 the school had an enrollment of sixty students. In 1904 ninety-seven students attended the school.

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“Rat” Harben Wheatville

A black and white copy photograph of an African American woman standing in front of a house with a front porch in the Wheatville subdivision, dating about 1900s.

1900

Wheatville School

Group portrait of students at Wheatville School with Melvin Stewart seated second from right and Isaac Chapman seated third from the left, 1920.

1920