This Week in Texas Methodist History  August 11

Last month’s historical sketch related how African Americans in Washington County left the Southern branch of Methodism.  This month we will see that German speaking Methodists also found a new home in another denomination after the Civil War. 

The first and most important German settlement in pre-Civil War Texas was Industry, just to the southwest of Brenham.   Industry's founder, Friedrich Ernst, wrote letters home extolling the beauty and fertility of the land.  After the formation of the Adelsverein to promote German immigration, Industry became a crucial stop on the way to the land grants in the Hill County.  

The stereotypical view of German religion—Catholic in the South, Lutheran in the North—obscures a more complex reality.  German immigrants to Texas also included a large number with a pietistic inclination, and they were ripe for the message Methodist circuit riders were bringing.  On the eve of the Civil War both the Texas Conference and the Rio Grande Mission Conference (today’s Rio Texas) of the MECS had German districts.

The end of the Civil War presented Germans with same problem it presented African Americans—to stay in the MECS or join another denomination.  The Presiding Elder of the Austin District of the MECS, which included the Hill Country German churches, convened a meeting and told them basically that the denomination was flat broke and could not continue mission payments to the churches.  The MEC, on the other hand was relatively well off and had a vigorous publishing concern in Cincinnati that produced German language Disciplines, Bible commentaries, tracts, Sunday School literature,  and newspapers for the German speaking conferences that stretched from New York to Iowa.  Even before the war, MECS Germans were using publications from the MEC. 

The MECS pastor at Industry, Carl Biel, took the lead and changed his church’s affiliation from MECS to MEC.  When the Texas Conference of the MEC was formed in January 1867, it consisted of about 70 African American preachers and 3 Germans—all of whom were from Industry.  More Germans were to follow.

As the German Methodists prospered, they had a problem.  The closest German Methodist school where aspiring preachers could go for ministerial training was in Iowa.  In 1883 that problem was solved with the creation of Blinn Memorial College at the 4^th Street Church.   The college began with the pastor, Carl Urbantke, and three students, but from those modest origins came a mighty force for education and evangelism.

The founding of Blinn shifted the center of Texas German Methodist from Industry to Brenham.   Young men studying for the ministry could attend classes all week and then go serve a church thanks to Brenham’s rail connections.  The efforts of the student pastors and transfers from the northern conferences led to the establishment of German MEC churches in all directions from Brenham.   The 4^th Street Church became a favored site for holding Annual Conference.   Thanks to Blinn Memorial College, Brenham became the only town in Texas in which the MEC and MECS churches were roughly equal in size an influence. 

Assimilation of German speakers into the English speaking world and the anti-German sentiment associated with World War I diminished the need for Blinn’s historic role.  When the Depression hit, the church lost control of the school, but Washington County voters created a special district to turn it into a public institution.