This Week in Texas Methodist History July 25

Why Historians Depend upon Documents Instead of Memory, Old Preacher “Misremembers”, July 25,  1935

Historians and lay persons should both know that human memory is quite fallible and should always be double checked with documents. 

In July 1935 the Southwestern Christian Advocate published the memories of Rev. J. David Crockett, a retired preacher living in Stamford.  Crockett had been licensed to preach in 1879 at a camp meeting on Oak Branch in Ellis County.  His ministerial career brought him into contact with several old time preachers including Andrew Davis, Joseph Sneed, and James Porter Stevenson. 

Crockett read Macum Phelan’s History of Texas Methodism, and that volume prompted him to send some of his memories to the Advocate.  One of those memories was about James Porter Stevenson who died in 1885 in Breckenridge where Crockett was his pastor.

Stevenson’s career is well known in Texas Methodist history.  In 1833 he was appointed to Natchitoches, Louisiana, and was invited to cross the Sabine and preacher to immigrant families who had recently come from the United States.  That invitation eventually led to the establishment of McMahan’s Chapel, the oldest Methodist church in Texas in continuous existence.

According to Crockett, Stevenson was arrested since Protestantism was prohibited in Mexican Texas.  He was then brought before Santa Anna for disturbing the peace.  Santa Anna questioned his purpose in coming to Mexico, and Stevenson replied, “to get good men to become better and bad men to become good.”   Santa Anna then told him “Go in peace.  You will not be disturbed any more.”:

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You probably already know that Santa Anna was not anywhere close to East Texas in 1833—the story could not be true.  A. J. Weeks, the Advocate editor, knew that and printed a correction and disclaimer that there is no record of Stevenson ever being arrested. 

This Week in Texas Methodist History July 19

Bishop Smith Replaces Deceased Bishop Adna Leonard on Important Commission, July 1943

Bishop A. Frank Smith was one of the most powerful bishops of the MECS and MC during the middle years of the twentieth century.  He was elected to the episcopacy in 1930 from the pulpit of First Methodist Church Houston, and although he was assigned to the Missouri and Oklahoma area conferences, he continued to live in Houston.  In 1934 he was assigned to the Houston area (Texas, West Texas, and Rio Grande Conferences) and lived in Houston until his death in 1962.  He spent his last months in Houston Methodist Hospital, an institution he had helped shape.  

He physically imposing and had a forceful personality.  He was elected at a fairly young age and soon achieved prominence on a denominational scale.  When Unification occurred in 1939, I would argue that Smith and his colleague Arthur Moore were the two most influential bishops to enter the new denomination from the MECS.   Moore and Smith were close friends having been in San Antonio at the same time, Moore at Travis Park and Smith at Laurel Heights.  Smith was the first president of the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church. 

Part of the prominence was his service on numerous denominational boards, agencies, and commissions.  In addition to his supervision of annual conferences, he served on the Board of Trustees of SMU, Southwestern,  Scarritt, Oklahoma City University and Lon Morris College. 

Much of his travel was by rail rather than air, and travel to his denominational meetings took up much of his time.  His obligations increased in July 1943 when he was named to the Commission on Army and Navy Chaplains to replace the deceased Bishop Adna Leonard (1874-1943).

On May 3 Leonard had been killed in a plane crash in Iceland on his way to Europe to meet with military chaplains serving in the European Theater.  Also dying in the crash was Lt. Gen. Frank M. Andrews in whose honor Andrews Air Force Base was named. 

Bishop Leonard was elected in 1916 and had served the San Francisco and Pittsburgh Episcopal Areas, but in 1943 was assigned to the Washington, D. C. area---perfect for his service on the Commission on Army and Navy Chaplains since that group met monthly.

Smith was no stranger to the Naval Department.  In 1918 while serving University Methodist in Austin he responded to the call for volunteers to the chaplaincy.  He already had enough influential contacts that he traveled to Washington for an interview with Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy rather than the local recruiter.   That meeting resulted in a Lieutenant’s Commission for Smith.  He returned to Austin, informed his congregation that he would be leaving, made plans for his family to move to Dallas while he was in the service, and prepared to enter the U. S. Navy. 

Unfortunately the Influenza Epidemic hit Austin, and one of the victims was 9 –month old son Charles Allen Smith who died on October 20.  Smith mailed his commission back to Secretary Daniels—he had to stay with his family in their time of grief.

The monthly trips to Washington for the rest of World War II meant that Smith was away from Houston much of the time.  There was at least one silver lining to those absences.  Another prominent Methodist Houstonian was in Washington---Jesse H. Jones, Secretary of Commerce and a member of St. Paul’s Methodist Church in Houston.  Smith and Jones were old friends.  Smith used his monthly trips to Washington to keep Jones up to date on the needs of Texas Methodists.   Jones made substantial gifts to our schools and hospitals—maybe the time spent on those long train rides wasn’t wasted after all. 

This Week in Texas Methodist History  July 12

Methodists Continue Moral Crusade in San Antonio, July 1920

It is difficult for many people in 2020 to grasp how important the issue of the prohibition of alcoholic beverages was to Methodists just one hundred years ago.  A whole generation of Methodists was consumed with the idea that banning the production, consumption, and distribution of alcoholic beverages was key to a better society.  Especially in the MECS, no other social issue attracted the concern of alcohol—not child labor, lynching, economic justice, public sanitation, ---no other social ill came close to the attention paid to alcohol.  Our difficulty in grasping the enormity of the issue lies in our living in a society saturated with alcohol.  Only a few remnants of  Prohibition survive in Texas such as the law against public consumption before noon on Sunday and the Sunday closing of liquor stores.  I guess that most teetotalers today abstain on health rather than religious reasons.

On January 17, 1920, Prohibition finally went into effect. Many Methodists felt the decades-long battle had been won, but they were mistaken.   They soon found that passing a law and enforcing that law were two different matters.   In 254 counties, one can imagine that some law enforcement officials were not very enthusiastic about enforcing laws that prevented consumption of beverages that had previously been legal.  There were plenty of examples of public corruption with local government and police forces accepting bribes to allow the sale of alcohol. 

A good illustration comes from July 1920 in San Antonio.  On July 12 of that year, the Rev. Harold Bennett (1893-?) of East End Methodist in San Antonio called a meeting to call for strict law enforcement.

The impetus for the meeting was his living in the East End and finding that the bars, brothels, gambling houses, and dance parlors barely paused their operations when Prohibition went into effect.   Elections were scheduled for July 24, and his efforts were designed to bring support to candidates most likely to crack down on the vice in the East End.  Prohibition proponents could shift their arguments from anti-alcohol to pro-law enforcement. 

Bennett enlisted the aid of C. A. Riley, pastor of the First Congregational Church, who spoke on “Forces of Evil Decry Publicity.”   They were both somewhat leery of clergy involvement in electoral politics so Bennett told the congregation, “I have finished my sermon.  I will not speak to you as President of the East End Improvement Association.”

It was a tough sell.  San Antonio, then as now, was a major tourist and military training city---with lots of potential customers for illicit pleasures.    Corruption and law enforcement continued to be important political issues in San Antonio municipal elections for decades.

This Week in Texas Methodist History  July 5

Coleman Methodists Dedicate New Church Building, July 6, 1891

Coleman Texas traces its origins to 1876 with the donation of 160 acres on Hord’s Creek to be the county seat for the newly organized county of the same name.  Although the railroad bypassed the town by five miles, a spur to the town was built by 1886.  The first courthouse was built from locally cut elm trees.  That courthouse included dormitory space for bachelors.  The first religious services were also held in the courthouse. 

The town and county grew rapidly as railroad lands were subdivided into ranches.  Coleman became a major supply center for the region.  True to stereotypes of western towns a shootout in a main street led to the first cemetery.

By 1900 the town had schools, a newspaper, and of course, a Methodist Church.  And what a Methodist Church it was, a new church that had been dedicated on July 6, 1891.

The dedication came at the end of the Brownwood District Conference.   The dedicatory sermon was preached by Rev. C. V. Oswalt (1856-1933) the station preacher at Comanche.  Oswalt had been the Coleman preacher when the church project began. 

The church had a seating capacity of 600, and had stained glass windows and a 70 foot spire.  News reports reveal that the side lecture rooms were full, and participants stood in the aisles---remember it was July in Texas—think of the heat!  The building had cost $5000 and consisted of an auditorium, lecture hall, and pastor’s study. 

Oswalt chose Genesis 26:29 as his text.  That text reveals how a famine was over the land, and Isaac went to Abimelek of the Philistines for help.  God told Isaac in a dream not to go to Egypt, but to stay where they were.   He then preached a long sermon in which he recounted Biblical history and U. S. history with the theme of building religion. 

Oswalt could not know the irony, but Coleman County faced two major famines just one generation later.  The droughts of 1917-18 and again in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s devastated the agricultural economy of the entire region—and resulted in depopulation.  Farmers and ranchers were forced to emigrate.  Eventually the population stabilized and First UMC of Coleman continues to bring ministries to the community.