During Reconstruction, the freed slaves in Seguin organized their own congregation, the Second Baptist Church, and in 1876, a school that came to be known as the Lincoln School. In 1887, they established Guadalupe College, comparable to a junior college today, with a heavy concentration on vocational education. These institutions were begun with the help of Rev. Leonard Ilsley, an abolitionist minister from Maine, but William Baton Ball, himself an ex-slave, Union soldier in the Civil War, and former Buffalo Soldier, became their leader. He was greatly assisted by his friend and benefactor George Brackenridge of San Antonio. (The main buildings of Guadalupe College burned due to a boiler malfunction during a bitterly cold night in 1936, and the college ended.)