St. Mary's Colony

St. Mary's Colony, a black farming community, is located in the far western corner of Bastrop County, seventeen miles west of Bastrop on State Highway 21. The Doyle and Patton families founded the community shortly after emancipation when their former owners, George and Mary Doyle, gave them 2,000 acres of land. St. Mary's Colony was named by a preacher known as Meridan. At one time its population was more than 300.

After World War II many people moved from the colony to Austin for employment rather than endure the hard life of dry-land farming. The colony had dwindled to a few families when Willie Mae Wilson, a former resident, sought the help of United States representative J. J. Pickle to bring water lines to the area. In 1976 Pickle secured a $2.7 million grant enabling the Farmer's Home Administration and the Aqua Water Supply Corporation, a Bastrop-based water cooperative serving rural areas of the county, to do the project. Water lines began serving St. Mary's Colony in the early months of 1979, and former members of the community began to return and set up summer homes. The St. Mary's Community Center, formerly an old two-room schoolhouse, was renovated in 1979.