This Week in Texas Methodist History September 27

 

Marlin Methodists Unsuccessful in Retraining District Seat, District Superintendent Moves to Bryan, September 1941

 

Methodist annual conferences are organized into regional districts presided over by a District Superintendent.  Throughout most of Methodist history the district was named after the city in which the District Superintendent lived.  The prestige of being a “District Seat” was of considerable importance to our ancestors, and communities took pride in that status.

 

Naturally population and transportation patterns change over time as rail roads and highways were built, new factories were built and oil fields were discovered.  It was sometimes necessary to change the district seat. Some of the relocations of district seats were obvious, but there have also been some head scratchers—How could they make that move?  For example, Texarkana gained the honor from Pittsburgh.  Texarkana is on the state line, and therefore cannot be central to the district.  Nacogdoches replaced Timpson and was later replaced by Lufkin.  Galveston lost to Houston, and so on. When Brenham lost the district seat, it was replaced by Galveston.  That seems odd until one realizes that the District Superintendent traveled by rail, and the old Brenham, new Galveston District was well served by the Gulf Coast and Santa Fe Railroad.

 

  Sometimes the removal of the district seat was met with opposition.  In 1945 Bishop A. Frank Smith moved the district seat from Marshall to Longview.  Marshall Methodists were so angry that they petitioned General Conference to move to the Louisiana Conference.  Bishop Smith was not welcome and did not go to Marshall for ten years. 

 

In 1941, the district seat for the westernmost counties of the Texas Conference was moved from Marlin to Bryan.   Marlin had been the district seat only since 1908 when it was moved there from Calvert.   It had been a strange move in 1908.  Marlin was in no way central to the churches in the district.  It was much closer to many churches in McLennan and Bell County which at the time were in the Northwest Texas Conference.   Some churches in the Marlin District were 125 miles away.  On the other hand, Marlin was well known for its therapeutic hot springs and attendant medical facilities.  Calvert had never achieved the population its boosters hoped for. 

 

Now after 33 years as the seat of the Marlin District, the District Conference voted by the necessary three-fourths majority of the quarterly conferences of the church  to move the District Offices and Parsonage to Bryan.  The special called District Conference that ratified the move was held in Bellville, one of the churches at the extreme southern end of the district, about 120 miles from Marlin.  One wonders if the District Superintendent, Clarence Lokey, chose the site of the called District Conference strategically—as far from Marlin as one could get. 

 

The move was prompted by an offer from First Methodist Bryan to donate a lot across the street from the church for the district parsonage.  The District created a Building Committee and built a $7000 brick veneer parsonage on the donated lot.  Marlin Methodists were chagrined at the loss of the District Seat and, after it was too late, offered to create a fund to compensate for the additional travel expenses that were incurred because Marlin was not central to the District. 

 

The most recent reorganization of the districts in the Texas Conference eliminated the practice of naming the district after the city and used geographic designations—North, Northwest, South,  South East and so on.  Bryan/College Station is still the district seat---but not of the Bryan District but of the West District.