This Week in Texas Methodist History March 4

Robert Alexander Reports on First District Tour, March, 1840

In 1840 Texas was still part of the Mississippi Conference of the MEC.  The work was so great that it was split into two districts with the Trinity River as the dividing line.  The two surviving missionaries of the three person missionary team sent in 1837 served as Presiding Elders of the two districts.  Littleton Fowler was PE of the eastern district and Robert Alexander PE of the western.

Alexander had already moved to Rutersville and made that his home base for the district which extended from Galveston to Marlin and encompassed settlements along the Brazos, Colorado, and Guadalupe River basins as well as the settlements on the west side of the Trinity.  A circuit of the district usually kept him away from home for six weeks. Imagine going by horseback from Victoria to Marlin four times per year.

In March 1840 he finished his first circuit in Galveston in the company of Edward Fontaine, the young man who had been assigned to Houston.  At Galveston he realized that this would be his best chance to post a letter to the Mission Board in New York City since there were regularly scheduled departures between those ports.

His report to the Mission Board here is part of his report

. . .we have seven circuits and one station . . . and circumstances seem to require the addition of another.  These appointments are scattered over an extensive territory, including more than half the settled portion of the republic, and the work is very laborious. 

The preachers in their respective circuits are truly in the spirit of their work and seem to regard the difficulties and privations with which they have to contend but rather esteem it a privilege to range these wilds in search of lost sheep of the house of Israel, and regard the swimming of creeks and rivers and sleeping alone on prairies, surrounded by howling wolves and beasts of prey, as trivial circumstances, while the people appear hungry for the bread of life. 

Alexander goes on in his report to mention that his greatest need is preachers to supply more churches.  Orceneth Fisher had returned to Illinois from Brazoria,  and Thomas Summers, who had been appointed to Galveston from the Baltimore Conference, had not yet arrived.