The Peyton Colony Heritage Foundation will be hosting the Annual Juneteenth Celebration on June 20, 2009. It will begin at 11:00am, and the food will be served from 1:00pm until 3:00pm. Lawrence Coffee will be cooking the brisket, Patty Coffee will do the beans, Robert and Gary Lynn will be cooking chicken, sausage, pork, Esther and Joyce will do the potato salad, and many others will be cooking all the trimmings. Plates are available by donation, and donations will be used to repair the well and school house, once enough is accrued to actually make some progress. A very kind anonymous-at-the-moment gentleman donated some large items to help repair the well.

This Juneteenth, we will also be accepting donations for homemade desserts, ice cream, and plants. We will also play bingo and sing gospel music. All are welcome to attend the festivities.

Peyton Colony will be receiving a historical marker and the unveiling will be this October, at the annual homecoming get together.

The Peyton Colony settlement was first called Freedmen’s Colony by white settlers, but was always known as Peyton’s Colony by the black settlers, because Peyton was their leader.

In the fall of 1865, after the crops were harvested, Peyton and some of the men-folk gathered together supplies and started a westward trek, searching for that haven where they might leave the violence and hatred of post-Civil War days, for a place where they could live amongst themselves in peace and quiet.

Their former master told them of public land west of Austin that could be homesteaded. And so it was that some forty miles west of Austin they found an isolated hilly region of very poor soil and that is where they chose to stop.

Though there is no actual proof, the story that the few slaves in the Blanco County region settled at Cold Mountain Springs after they were freed has been accepted as fact by the descendants of the early settlers of Blanco.

Because a home did not seem to be a proper place for public worship, the Reverend Jack Burch pitched a tent and organized the first church in 1874, and he remained the leader of the church for many years. The church was named Mt. Horeb Baptist Church and the charter members numbered five; namely, Susan Burch, Susan Brigham, James Upshaw, Clem Upshaw, and Millie McConico.