This Week in Texas Methodist History March 30

Martin Ruter Born April 3, 1785

Martin Ruter would be a great figure in Methodist History even if he had not been in charge of the first official MEC mission to Texas. Although he lived in Texas less than a year, his influence has lasted for decades.

Ruter was born in Worcester County, Massachusetts on April 3, 1785. His father was a blacksmith. The family then moved to Vermont. While living in Bradford, Vermont, the young Ruter boarded with Mrs. Peckett who had, in her youth, been John Wesley’s housekeeper. She owned Wesley’s works which she made available to young Martin. John Broadhead, presiding elder, held a revival in September, 1800. The fifteen-year old Martin exhorted the crowd so powerfully that Broadhead asked Martin to join him. “If my father will let me, I will go” was the reply.

Thus began a thirty-seven year career of preaching, church administration, writing, teaching, religious education, managing the Book Concern at Cincinnati, supplying presidential leadership to church colleges, . . . the list of accomplishments could go on.

He could have rested on these accomplishments. After all, he was over fifty years old, but he felt a call to bring Methodism to the infant Republic of Texas. He arrived in late November, 1837 and died the following May. Those few months were a whirlwind of activity. He traveled over 2000 miles establishing circuits, soliciting donations, preaching, marrying, and performing other missionary duties. His great passion, though, was his dream of establishing a Methodist university. He lobbied Congress for a charter and promoted the project in the rude settlements along the Brazos and Colorado Rivers.

He did not live long enough to see his dream fulfilled, but the seeds he had sown fell on fertile soil. About two months after his death, a group of Methodists bought a league of land in Fayette County and started a town. They named it Rutersville. Eighteen months later instruction began at Rutersville College.
Ruter’s legacy continues today at Southwestern University which proudly claims Rutersville College as one of its root colleges. Perhaps this Thursday, you might pause a moment and reflect on Ruter and his legacy.

This Week in Texas Methodist History March 23

James Davis Expelled from New Hope Church March 25, 1845

Church membership is a much more casual affair today than it was in the first decades of Texas Methodism. Today a person who was baptized as an infant can walk to the altar during the closing hymn, answer a few questions, and be received into membership. That person’s name will then appear on the membership rolls come what may.

Methodist church membership once imposed far more rigorous requirements. Prospective members were subject to a probationary period in which they were expected to show outward fruits of their conversion experience. They were also expected to attend class meetings. Such class meetings were a distinctive feature of Methodism in the first half of the 19th century. Members would meet to examine the state each other’s souls and to help each other in the constant struggle against Satan’s temptations.

Once a probationary period was completed, the member was supposed to adhere to the rigid discipline of the church. Church trials which resulted in expulsion of lay members were common. Macum Phelan reported a trial against James Davis of New Hope in Van Zandt County. Here are excerpts from the minutes of the trial.

. . .the first charge is for having shot a yearling Bull a stray and skinning it and Leaveing the carcus in the woods.. . .the second is for having shot a Beef Belonging to Mortimer Dunehew three or four times Leaving it un Killed.

. . .Mr. Davis Pleads not Guilty to the first charge Mr. Smith a witness states that he was in the woods and meets Mr. Davis’s son with the hide and asked him if he had been Boochering and he Replide that it was a hide he had just taken of from a Little Bull they had found Dead he then ast him where it was and he told him it was Just over the turn of the hill he was he left the Boy and went to the carcus and found that it had been shot through the heart and the Blud was Running warm round the heart. . .


. . . We the Committee Do Unnanumously agree that James Davis is Guilty of the Charges aleged against him which Charges we Beleave to be Sufficient to Exclude a Person from the Kingdom of Grace and Glory

Davis appealed his expulsion to the quarterly conference which upheld the verdict.

This Week in Texas Methodist History March 16

Orceneth Fisher Leaves New Orleans for California March 22 1855
The career of Orceneth Fisher shows that in at least one case, Texas not only received missionaries, it also sent them to other mission fields.

Fisher was born in Vermont in 1803, but moved west when still a teenager. He joined the Missouri Conference and served a number of appointments in Illinois. In 1839 he located for health reasons and moved to Brazoria to take advantage of a warmer climate. He was soon pressed into service as a local preacher there. He returned to Illinois a widower (evidently Texas was not really all that healthy for Mrs. Fisher) but soon returned to Texas as a transfer to the Texas Conference.
Fisher found time while serving as pastor to write several books dealing with baptism to strengthen the Methodist cause of infant baptism against the Baptists. In 1848 he remarried. His new wife was the 17 year old Rebecca Gilleland, a student at Rutersville and member of a pioneer Texas family. Fisher was forty-five at the time.

In 1855 he felt called to the mission field again, this time to California and Oregon. He and Rebecca sailed from New Orleans on March 22, 1855 and arrived safely. He spent fifteen years in the West. He was a preacher, presiding elder, and editor. He also helped found Corvallis College in Oregon.

In 1870 he was elected a delegate to the MECS General Conference in Memphis. He used that event to transfer back to the Texas Conference and served a variety of local churches and districts. He died in Austin in 1880. Rebecca became quite famous in her own sphere—that of Texas history. She was one of the founders of the Daughters of the Texas Revolution and helped save the Alamo from destruction. She died in Austin on March 21, 1926. Her body lay in state in the Senate chamber. Honorary pallbearers included both U. S. senators and four former governors of Texas.

This Week in Texas Methodist History March 9

Annual Conference Disrupted by Armed Mob March 11 1859

Imagine the scene—The presiding bishop at an annual conference is conducting the ordination service on a Sunday morning. A mob armed with shotguns, pistols, and knives gathers outside. One of the leaders of the mob marches in and demands that the conference close and members disperse. The bishop asks permission to finish the service, but the mob insists on reading a set of demands which include the dissolution of the annual conference. It’s hard to imagine greater tension in a Methodist annual conference.

Improbable as it seems, that’s what happened on March 11, 1859 when Bishop Edmund Janes was presiding over the Arkansas Conference of the MEC at Timber Creek in Fannin County. Let’s set the stage.

When the southern conferences of the MEC withdrew and formed the MEC South in 1846, the MEC disappeared from Texas. The disappearance was short-lived. Immigrants from the Upper South and Ohio Valley to North Texas included northern Methodists who naturally organized themselves into churches. In 1852 the MEC General Conference reconstituted the Arkansas Conference which included a Texas Mission. The charges in that mission were concentrated in Collin, Fannin, and Denton Counties. The presiding elder of the mission, Anthony Bewley at one time had five preachers under his administration.

The Arkansas Conference convened at Timber Creek on Friday March 11 under inauspicious circumstances. A meeting at Millwood on March 4 had resulted in a call for local residents to attend the conference and monitor the deliberations for any hints of abolitionist sentiment. The results of that meeting had been published in the Bonham newspaper so the entire community was aware of possible friction.

On Saturday March 12 one of the MEC conference attendees went the three miles from Timber Creek to Bonham and evidently expressed his opinion that the MEC was solidly in the abolitionist camp and intended to end slavery. His remarks prompted a angry meeting of locals in the courthouse.

The Conference was so small that it could have wrapped up its business that Saturday and adjourned, but the preachers wanted a Sunday worship service in which Bishop Janes would preach, administer communion, and ordain deacons so they did not adjourn on Saturday night.

It was that Sunday morning service that was interrupted by Judge Sam Roberts who presented the resolutions that had been drawn up at the courthouse meeting. Janes explained that the conference was not in a business session and therefore could not respond to the demands. The mob withdrew. The conference reconvened at 6:00 a.m. on Monday for the reading of appointments and adjournment.

Both Janes and Roberts left written accounts of this episode, and published reports appeared in both the religious and secular press. Curiously, the main journalistic debate was not about the events themselves or whether the MEC was truly an abolitionist organization. The debate centered on whether the mob was acting on its own authority or in behalf of the MECS. Bad blood over the episode continued to be a source of enmity between the denominations for at least a decade.

HISTORICAL ATLAS OF TEXAS METHODISM PUBLISHED

William C. Hardt and Bishop John Wesley Hardt are pleased to announce the publication of Historical Atlas of Texas Methodism.

This 256 page hardbound book provides a comprehensive overview of all of the Wesleyan denominations that have existed in Texas.

The Table of Contents is as follows:

1. BRANCHES OF THE VINE
2. FIRST STEPS
3. ESTABLISHING METHODISM IN AUSTIN’S COLONY
4. A LOUD AND URGENT CALL
5. A REPRESENTATIVE CIRCUIT OF THE REPUBLIC
6. ORGANIZING THE TEXAS CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
7. BISHOP MORRIS’S EPISCOPAL VISIT
8. FROM ONE CONFERENCE TO TWO
9. FROM TWO CONFERENCES TO FIVE
10. THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE 1850S
11. BOUNDARY CHANGES OF THE 1880S
12. BOUNDARY CHANGESOF THE 1890S
13. NEW MEXICO AND THE TRANS PECOS
14. REDRAWING BOUNDARIES, 1902, 1910
15. THE METHODIST PROTESTANT CHURCH
16. THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH ON THE EVE OF UNION
17. AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
18. SPANISH SPEAKING METHODISTS
19. GERMAN METHODISTS IN THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH
20. SWEDISH SPEAKING METHODISTS
21. EVANGELICAL UNITED BRETHREN
22. CREATING THE METHODIST CHURCH IN 1939
23. METHODIST PROTESTANTS ON THE EVE OF UNION
24. A REPRESENTATIVE CIRCUIT OF THE 1940S
25. LARGEST METHODIST CHURCHES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
26. WOMAN’S MISSIONARY SOCIETY INSTITUTIONS
27. BOHEMIAN AND ITALIAN MISSIONS
28. SCHOOLS
29. A CENTRAL UNIVERSITY, SOUTHWESTERN
30. SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY
31. ENCAMPMENTS
32. JOURNALISM
33. MINISTRIES TO COLLEGE STUDENTS
34. HISTORIC SITES
35. ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
36. HOMES AND HOSPTIALS
37. AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
38. CHRISTIAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
39. AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL, ZION, CHURCH
40. AFRICAN AMERICAN METHODIST REGIONAL SPECIALIZATION
41. CONGREGATIONAL METHODIST CHURCH
42. FREE METHODIST CHURCH and WESLEYAN METHODIST CHURCH
43. CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE
44. POST 1939 DENOMINATIONS

The following link is provided as a service to prospective purchasers who may also contact one of the authors.

http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Atlas-Texas-Methodism-William/dp/1934749079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204585178&sr=1-1

TUMHS ANNUAL MEETING

The Texas United Methodist Historical Society will convene for its annual meeting on Friday, March 28, 2008 at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. The theme of the meeting deals with the 40th anniversary of the abolition of the Central Jurisdiction by action of the 1968 General Conference of the Methodist Church.

The complete program is as follows:


Texas United Methodist Historical Society 2008 program

Friday, March 28
`
12:00-1:00
Registration

Julie Puett Howry Center
1:00-1:30
Welcome, Devotional, etc.
Devotional, Rev. Dr. Roberto Gomez, El Mesias UMC, Mission, .
1:30-1:40
Introduction to the theme
Hardt will frame the issue “The Church and Institutional Racism”
1:45-2:45
"No Galleries in Heaven": African
Americans and the United Methodist Church in Texas
William Montgomery, Austin Community College, emeritus,

2:45-3:00
Break

3:00-4:00
"Southwestern History as Seen in Reference to the Old and the New South"
William B. Jones, Southwestern University, emeritus,

4:00-6:00
Break

6:00-8:30
Dinner

Recognition of William B. Jones for To Survive and Excel: The History of Southwestern University 1845-2000.

Commeration of Founding of Texas Methodist Historical Association at Southwestern University in 1908.

"Conscience and Compromise: Racial Politics within Early American Methodism"

Terry Bilhartz, Chair of History Department, Sam Houston State University, Red and Charlene




Saturday, March 29

8:00-8:30
Coffee, registration

8:30-8:45
devotional
Rev. Debra Crumpton, Wellspring UMC, Georgetown
8:45-10:15
Program
Personal testimonies, anecdotes, oral histories of church desegregation,. Attendees are invited to come with prepared statements (10 minute maximum) of some event, anecdote, etc. in which they participated in the desegregation of the church in Texas. The editor of the Heritage Journal will select some of those for publication in the HJ.
10:15-10:30
Break

10:30-11:30
Business meeting, awards, etc
11:30-
Lunch







LOCATION: A campus map may be found at http://southwestern.edu/tour/campus-map.pdf

The program will be held in the Julie Puett Howry Center (#14 on the map). The Friday evening banquet will be held in the Red and Charlene McCombs Campus Center (#29 on the map).

COST: $25.00 Registration Please mail to Rev. John C. Johnson, 6766 Silver Saddle Rd., Fort Worth, Texas 76126



LODGING: The following list of establishments is provided as a convenience for participants and does not constitute an endorsement. Attendees are responsible for their own lodging. These establishments offer discounted rates to persons attending events at Southwestern.

Comfort Suites of Georgetown
512-863-7544
www.comfortsuites.com

Holiday Inn Express
512-868-8555
800-465-4329
www.HIEgeorgetown.com

LaQuinta Inn
512-869-2541
800-531-5900
www.lq.com

Quality Inn
512-863-7504
www.qualityinn.choicehotels.com

This Week in Texas Methodist History March 2

Week set Aside for Prayer and Fasting March 1868

The 1866 General Conference of the MECS authorized the Texas and East Texas Conferences to divide and by doing so create two new conferences. The East Texas Conference broke off its northern section and created the Trinity Conference. That conference was later renamed the North Texas Conference. The Texas Conference broke off its northern counties and created the Northwest Texas Conference. In 1910 that conference again divided into the Central Texas and Northwest Texas Conference.

The new conferences naturally faced some difficulties during the turmoil of Reconstruction. The Northwest Texas Annual Conference met in Springfield in Limestone County in November 1867. The condition of the church reflected the hard times. Several window panes had been blown out on the north side of the building. When a norther hit, attendees scrounged up a stove, and since there was no stove pipe, they just stuck a flue out an open south window. One can imagine the discomfort. The presiding bishop, David S. Doggett worried about coming down with pneumonia so far away from his home in Virginia.

It is little wonder that in such conditions when Bishop Doggett asked the question, “Who is to be admitted?” no one stepped forward. That was a genuine crisis. The church was dependent upon a new class of preachers to replace those who located, died, or transferred. Every preacher in the drafty church knew how serious the problem was. They all knew that their circuits would have to be lengthened to take up the slack. They then appointed the first week of March 1868 as a week of prayer and fasting for God to send new candidates for admission.

Lewis Whipple was able to report answered prayer at the 1868 annual conference. Seven candidates were admitted. Two former members accepted appointments. One Methodist Protestant was admitted. There were also transfers from the Texas and West Texas Conferences—The Northwest Texas Conference had twelve new traveling preachers! (Two preachers had died during the year.)

The increase in ranks was just what the young conference needed. The population within its boundaries was booming as farmers pushed westward. Within a few years the Northwest Texas Conference would report the largest membership of any annual conference in Texas.