The Deed

From Harris County Deed Books, vol. 10, p. 515:

The State of Texas, County of Harris: Know all men by these presents that we Sarah J. Wellborm [sic] and M. C. Wellborm [sic] sole heirs at Law of William Wellborm [sic] deceased, both of said County for and in consideration of the sum of Eight Hundred coin dollars to us in hand paid do hereby sell grant and convey unto Richard Allen, Richard Brock, Frank Keeland, John Sessums, Johnson Rice, Taylor Burke, Daniel Rilley, John Graham and Tillman Bush trustees of the colored people of Harris County known as the Festival Association. The following described land and premises situated in said County and State viz: Lot No. 25 Twenty-Five in the Holman Survey in the city of Houston on the South Side of Buffalo Bayou containing (10) Ten acres. … Witness our hands at Houston this 10th day of July 1872. … Recorded July 18, 1872 at 10 o’clock a.m.

Brock and Sessums are Methodists.

1880s and After

The “Colored Emancipation Park Association” chartered in 1883.

In 1890, shortly after the 25th anniversary of Juneteenth, new directors for the Emancipation Park association were elected: Milton A. Baker, H. C. Ferguson, C. N. Love, Rev. H. [Watts?], Robert Jones, RObert Andrews, and [first name?] Quillen. Baker was elected at the same time to the Gregory Institute board, along with Monroe Baker and Rev. C. C. Minegan, to “[fill] the vacancies caused by the deaths of Rev. Elias Dibble, Peter Noble and Sandy Parker.”¹

In 1915, Mollie A. (Mary) Baker (widow of Milton A. Baker, who died in 1905?²) loaned $1000 to the directors of the Association.³

From 1923, Houston Informer article emphasizing that Black citizens purchased Emancipation Park, and also mentioning Robert Fairchilds as an early trustee.

This article, by C. F. Richardson, was responding to an editorial in the Houston Chronicle, November 25, 1923, attacking the NAACP effort to secure pardon for the 1917 soldiers. According to the Chronicle, when the events of the so-called Houston mutiny broke out, “arrangements were being made and were nearly completed to provide a watermelon feast for all the negro soldiers at Emancipation park, a 10-acre piece of property worth at least $50,000, which was the gift of a white man and former slave owner to the negroes of Houston.”⁴ Richardson responds by pointing directly to the deed records.

See more here on later legal actions by city: https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wmY3CC_Suit_By_State_to_Escheat_Property_Known_as_the_Emancipation_Park_Houston_TX