This Week in Texas Methodist History July 28

My home church, Brenham FUMC, is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year.  I am contributing articles for our Newsletter.  For the next few weeks I will share these articles on this site.

The origin of First United Methodist Church of Brenham may be traced to 1844 when a group of worshipers met in Hickory Grove School House, but in a real sense, the origins lay deeper than that—at least 20 years before that.  Many of Austin’s colonists who began receiving land titles in what is today Washington County were Methodists and provided a warm welcome to Methodist preachers coming through the region.  There is evidence that Henry Stevenson preached to the family of Amos Gates in 1824.   In 1834 William Medford, who entered the Missouri Conference on 1818 and came to Texas after assuming the local preacher status, set up an informal four point circuit which included the Walker House on New Year’s Creek.

 The camp meetings of 1834 and 1835 that resulted in the petition to send missionaries to Texas occurred on a branch of Caney Creek, just to the southeast of Brenham.   Those meetings were quickly followed by others just to the north at Yegua Creek.  The grandest Methodist ambition of all in the neighborhood was Centre Hill, David Ayres’s attempt to create a Methodist town just a few miles south of the Caney Creek meeting site.    When Centre Hill lost out on the location of the Methodist university to the new town of Rutersville in Fayette County, the town fizzled. 

The Texas Mission was established by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1837, and by 1839 the Washington Circuit which consisted of Washington County and a few adjacent preaching points, was considered the strongest circuit in “Western Texas”, and ambitious preachers vied to be appointed here.  In an era in which congregations met in school houses, court houses, and private residences, Washington County had a church house at Washington on the Brazos. 

The practice of the day was  for preachers to ride circuit among possibly as many as a dozen or more “preaching points” so much of the task of keeping the church active between those circuit rider visits fell to laity.  Each preaching point would have at least one class leader who led the flock in the weeks when the circuit rider was not there.  Most churches also had a Sunday School Superintendent to make sure that everyone---both adults and children attended to the study of Holy Scripture.  Another lay position of the era was “Exhorter.”  Whoever held that position was official recognized for gifts of fervent prayer and persuasion.   In 1844 Brenham was fortunate to have strong lay leadership, chief of whom was Jabez Giddings.  Much later his nephew, James Sloan Giddings wrote about the origins of the church.

In 1844 there were about six houses situated near the place where Brenham now stands. 

There was a log school house a half mile NE of the present court house.  It was called Hickory Grove.

The first teacher was Jim Mitchell, and he was a Methodist.

J. D. Giddings married that year, and built a log house about one hundred yards north of the school house. He married Miss Ann Tarver. 

The Methodist church was organized in that school house in that year 1844.  A Sunday School was started with Edmund D. Tarver as supt.  

Four years later the church had grown enough to buy a building lot.  Giddings described it

It was about 30 by 50 feet.  It had two doors in front—three windows on each side two on the north side-one on each side of the pulpit, which was high, reached by two or three steps and was boarded around.  When the preacher sat down, he was almost out of sight of the congregation.  It had a steeple and a bell.  

That church building served the needs of the congregation until 1879 when it was sold to the Christian denomination and a new, larger church made of brick instead of cedar logs was built on a different lot.