FREEDMEN FARM: Our latest planned history site

Celebrating Juneteenth, June 19, the day that brought freedom to 250,000 enslaved Texans, Pioneer Farms is moving ahaerad with the development of an historical interpretive site showcasing the accomplishments of the Freedmen.

The site is located near our Sprinkle Corner entrance village, at a prominent spot overlooking the rich Blackland Prairie pastures in an area that was once home to several hundred Freedmen families.

The centerpiece of the site is a one-story farm house that was once home to Jack and Mary Jane Dodson, noted Freedmen leaders in the Manchaca area of Travis County. The Dodsons lived for many years in the house that was relocated to Pioneer Farms to save it from demolition. The house, generously donated by the landowners to preserve its history, is shown above before its move.

The site is to be interpreted for the early 1890s, the height of the Freedmen’s movement. Plans call for a fully restored and functioning farmstead where visitors can see and learn about life by these Texans who gained their freedom from slavery after Emancipation.

The story of the Freedmen in Central Texas is a story rich in history and successes, one that will add tremendously to the history experience for visitors at Pioneer Farms so they can better understand a fuller history of the Lone Star State.

The Dodson House is currently open for self-guided tours, as initial restoration work is starting. Detailed historical research for the site is continuing.

Freedmen families were prominent residents in the area where Pioneer Farms is located, many locating there from large cotton plantations to the north and east on the rich Blackland Prairie. Sprinkle, Texas, a small town once located just southeast of Pioneer Farms, was among nearly two dozen Freedmen’s communities in the Austin area, along with Wheatsville, Clarksville and Rosedale.

Many Freedmen relocated to the Austin area after Emancipation because of the protective presence of the Union Army troops that were stationed in the capital city.

While President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 is recognized as the declaration that freed slaves in the United States, Confederate states didn’t recognize the Union decree. So, even after the war ended at Appomattox in April of 1865, Texan slaves weren’t freed until June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and read aloud a Union proclamation that officially ended slavery in Texas.

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection therefore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer . . . ,” states the General Order No. 3 that Granger read.

Much of the history of the Freedmen is not widely known, something the new Freedmen Farm interpretive site seeks to address.

Pioneer Farms currently has 10 interpretive areas: The 1899 Sprinkle Corner entrance village, an 1898 community church, an 1888 Cotton Planter’s Farm, an 1878 Texian Farm, an 1875 Stagecoach Stop, an 1873 Chisholm Trail experience, 1870 German Blockhouse, an 1866 German Emigrant Farm, an 1850s Walnut Creek Greenbelt and an 1844 Tonkawa Encampment.

Donations of any amount to help fund the restoration of the historic Dodson House are welcomed. You may contribute here. Donors will be recognized in signage at the restored site.