This Week in Texas

Henry Matthews Describes Camp Meeting Site on Piney Creek, September 23, 1838

The Henry Matthews Diary sheds interesting light on Methodist activities in the Republic of Texas.  The entry for September 23, 1838 describes the Piney Creek Camp Meeting site.

Matthews was writing from San Felipe which was situated at a major river crossing on the Brazos River.  It had been Stephen F. Austin’s headquarters and played a prominent role in events leading up to the Texas Revolution.  The town was burned during the Revolution and although residents tried to rebuild, and it was named seat of newly created Austin County, but it never regained its pre-Revolution prominence.  The reasons for its decline were rooted in both human and physical geography.  Independence from Mexico brought new circulation patterns for travelers.  As immigrants came to the San Felipe region, they preferred the higher lands just to the north of San Felipe.  Those lands featured a mosaic of prairies and woodlands that offered both timber and grazing.  The rolling sandy hills contributed to better drainage. 

Some of the immigrants were Methodist, and a cluster of them developed on Piney Creek to the north of San Felipe.  Here is how Matthews described a site chosen for a camp meeting in a grove of pine trees

the Church camp meeting 15 or 16 (miles) above on Piney is now in progress. And the weather delightful. As we returned from Kenney’s we viewed the spot and give it the preference to any we ever saw in the United States.  The grove is naturally open and clean and an open stream meandering through the wood. It also had the advantage of the oldest Anglo Saxon settlement in Texas who are beginning to get over the evils of the Mexican invasion.

The host families at the site, Bell, Medford, and Atkinson, continued to support Methodist preachers in the area.   Three miles further to the north was the home of David Ayres, the proprietor of Centre Hill and father-in-law of Robert Alexander.  About 7 miles to the northwest was the home of John Wesley Kenney.  The region became one of the most important sites of Methodism in the Republic.

When residents finally gave up on San Felipe as the county seat of government, there was an election to determine the new site.   Ayres and Bell each offered tracts for that purpose.,  The offer by Bell, adjacent to the Piney Creek Camp Meeting site won the election.,  That is how Bellville was created.   Ayres abandoned Centre Hill and moved to Galveston.