This Week in Texas Methodist History May 21

Methodists Organize in Bastrop, Spring, 1833

(presented without comment)

Source:   In The Shadow Of The Lost Pine

A HISTORY OF BASTROP COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE

Bastrop Methodist Church

Oldest In Southwest Texas

By Lucy R. Maynard

(Oct. 14, 1952)

   In studying the early cultural activities of people living at this place on the Colorado River, we read:

   “A party was usually an all-night affair since it was dangerous for the guests to return to their homes after dark. Mrs. Josiah Wilbarger Chambers recalled one such celebration which she said took place in Bastrop in the early 1830’s. A priest from San Antonio mission came to perform religious ceremonies for twenty-five couples who had been married by common contract. The wedding and the subsequent celebration took place in a two-story house in the southern part of the town which was a combination dance hall, courthouse and meeting house. After the ceremony, a feast was spread and the settlers made merry until daylight.”

   In 1832, James Gilliland moved to a place on the Colorado thirteen miles below Austin and built Moore’s Fort, about where Webberville is now. Gilliland was a Methodist exhorter and though not a licensed preacher, spent his free time riding bout the countryside gathering people together for religious services, and we read:

   “This lay preaching of Gilliland took him to the little settlement of Bastrop one Sunday morning in the spring of 1833. A meeting was held in the incomplete storehouse of Jesse Holderman. Planks were placed on boxes or kegs for seats and a barrel was used as a pulpit. On that memorable Sunday morning the first Methodist Church within the bounds of what is now our Conference was organized. The white people, Mr. and Mrs. C. Anderson, Mr. and Mrs. Boyce, Mr. and Mrs. Delaplane, Mr. and Mrs. Brisband, Mrs. Sara McGehee, Mrs. Christian, and one Negro woman, Cecelia Craft, who belonged to Mrs. Samuel Craft, of Craft’s Prairie, became the charter members.”

   One account says that the brother of Mrs. Harriet Taylor (daughter of Samuel Craft of Craft’s Prairie) arrived home one Saturday saying that church services were to be held the next day in Bastrop. Mrs. Taylor and her brother rode in on horseback to the meeting. However, their names do not appear on the roster. Cecilia Craft was probably the maid who accompanied Mrs. Taylor.

   How often this group held services we do not know, because at that time, Protestant religious services were illegal and strictly forbidden. The Roman Catholic Church was the only religion permitted by the Mexican Government.

-transcription by Kate Maynard, 2012