Ebenezer

Ebenezer is on Farm Road 557 five miles southeast of Pittsburg in southeastern Camp County. Settlement in the area began in the 1850s when Israel Braden Rape, Robert Devenport, and Thomas DeLaney (later shortened to Laney) brought their families and slaves from Georgia and established their homesteads on adjoining farms. Rape donated land for a cemetery and a building site for a school and church. From the beginning the building was often called Rape's Academy, and that served as the original name of the school district. The community consisted almost exclusively of farmers, and, with the exception of cotton gins and gristmills, there are no records of any commercial activity connected with the settlement. In 1897 the school district had forty-nine children of school age. The school was a one-room, one teacher, ungraded school. By 1935 improvements in transportation and the consolidation of common school districts had expanded the area served by the school at Ebenezer. That year six teachers taught ten grades to 180 White children. The school board also oversaw a ten-grade school, located two miles southwest, where five teachers taught 107 Black children. By 1955 both schools had closed, and the district had been consolidated with the Pittsburg Independent School district. The population of Ebenezer was estimated at sixty in 1968. In 1983 Ebenezer had two churches, a cemetery, and a population estimated at fifty-five. The population estimate was still fifty-five in 2000.