This Week in Texas Methodist History February 25

Chauncey Richardson Arrives in Galveston, Goes on to Houston, March 1839

Last week’s post included the notice of Chauncey’s Richardson’s departure from New Orleans on his way to Texas.  Richardson (b. 1802) was a Vermont native who was admitted to the New England Conference and served appointments in Vermont and Massachusetts.  As was common in the era, the rigors of circuit riding injured his health.  He chose to spend his recuperation time at Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut.  In 1833 he left New England to accept the presidency of a female academy in Tuscumbia, Alabama.  He kept that post until he accepted the presidency of the projected Rutersville College.

Richardson left a record of his first weeks in Texas.  He described both Galveston and Houston.  It can be difficult for us to realize how new both of these cities were.  Although Galveston Island had been the site of human activity for decades, numbering pirates and filibusters, customs agents and castaways, the city itself was not founded until town lots were offered for sale in April, 1838.  Houston was not much older, having been founded at the confluence of White Oak Bayou and Buffalo Bayou, the supposed head of navigation.  

Richardson’s reached Galveston on March 3.  Here is what he found

Galveston City presents a find appearance from the harbor, though it has the marks of extreme growth.  Its site was but recently occupied by a band of pirates.  The present size and wealth of the city are but a miniature representation of its future greatness and importance.  It is destined to be to Texas what New Orleans is to the Mississippi Valley.  Its harbor, even now, presents a forest of masts, and is animated with the living power of steam. On it float the flags of England, the United States, of Spain, and of France.  The city, I am told, is under the most excellent municipal administration and is rapidly improving.  It contains several hundred houses and about two thousand inhabitants. 

Richardson did not linger in Galveston.  He took a steamboat to Houston.  He stayed there about 3 weeks and headed toward Rutersville in Fayette County, another new city, having been founded by a group of Methodists in 1838 specifically to host a Methodist university.  They chose to create their own town rather than establishing a school in an existing city so they could exclude taverns, gambling dens, horse racing tracks and other impediments to piety.  

Richardson travelled the Atascocita Road to San Felipe where he crossed the Brazos on the ferry.  Coincidently the ferry franchise at the time was owned by another Methodist preacher, Henry Matthews.  

Upon arrival at Rutersville Richardson found himself in the greatest concentration of Methodists anywhere in Texas.  Among the residents were Robert Alexander, and the two preacher-physicians who had attended Martin Ruter in his final illness in Washington on the Brazos.  

Richardson spent the rest of 1839 building a university from scratch.  It opened in January 1840 and received its charter from the Congress of the Republic of Texas in February.  

Richardson served as Rutersville president, editor of the Advocate, and presiding elder.  His Texas life ended where it began, on Galveston Island.  He died there April 11, 1852.  His body was brought back to Rutersville for burial.