This Week in Texas Methodist History, December 27

 

Bishops Capers Presides Over Texas Conference in Chappell Hill, December, 29, 1847

 

Bishop William Capers (1790-1855) presided over the 8^th session of the Texas Conference held at Chappell Hill which convened on December 29, 1847.  Capers was a member of the South Carolina planter elite who had received a good classical education and really didn’t like the way Texans used their frontier status as an excuse for unholy habits. 

 

He had traveled overland to Chappell Hill and therefore was subjected to the rude accommodations along the way.  He was appalled at the common practice of all guests at an inn or private residence sleeping in the same room “without so much as a screen or curtain.” 

 

By 1847 Texas had already acquired a reputation as a refuge for scoundrels, deadbeats, criminals, and other undesirable characters.  A man at Logan’s Port (Logansport, Louisiana) had jested with Bishop Capers as he was about to enter Texas for the first time.

 

“To drink the waters of the Sabine will make a man a thief, and to drink of the Tonaboe (the first creek one encountered in Texas.  Does he mean Tantabogue?) would make him cunning to conceal stolen goods.’  Capers goes on to say about Texans, “For some cause or other, many have fallen in to a savage mode of life and are indifferent to its correction.”    Capers observed three types of Texans, the avaricious whose interest was in obtaining more and more property, the lazy who were also dirty.  Capers placed his hope for Texas in the third group who were amenable to being organized into Methodist societies and become decent and respectable. 

 

When he got to Chappell Hill and opened the Conference, he found great progress in the establishment of the Methodist Church.  The German Mission, which had been begun the previous year in Galveston, was expanded to include Houston, San Antonio, and Victoria/Indianola.  The Houston African Mission was established and two new districts—Austin and San Antonio were created.  The Washington District was discontinued, probably in recognition that Austin and not Washington was firmly established as the capital. 

 

Bishop Capers may have complained about the roughness of Texas, but the conference minutes show considerable progress in the civilizing mission of the church.

 

 

A side note.   In the description of his travel to Texas, Capers also criticized the roughness he encountered in Missouri and Arkansas.  One of his meals in the Ozarks was something I had not seen in other sources.  He said he was served a dish of beef, pork, wild turkey, and chicken, all boiled together in clear water without any seasoning—even salt.  At another inn the only food was beef steak—which he pronounced of excellent quality.    

 

This Week in Texas Methodist History,  December 20,

 

Methodist Colleges Confer Honorary Degrees (Lots of Degrees!) December 1947

 

Conferring honorary Doctor of Divinity or Doctor of Laws degrees was once a favorite activity of Methodist colleges and universities in Texas.  Most convocations featured at least four and sometimes more degrees being conferred.  There was usually a mix of clergy and laity who received the honorary degrees.  The clergy were often recognized for their service beyond the local church.  They were men (all men at the time) who served on Conference boards and agencies and were often on the boards of the universities awarding the degrees.  The laity tended to be philanthropists who had donated to the institutions and also served on the boards of trustees.

 

It was common practice for one of the honorees to deliver the commencement address during the ceremony. 

 

In December 1947 quite a few Texans were able to affix a newly coined “Dr.” to their business cards and stationery thanks to Iliff and Southwestern.  Here are the honorees, whose names will be known to many readers of this blog.

 

Iliff (only Texan honorees named)

 

Olin Nail, pastor at Donna, and historian of the Southwest Texas Conference

Gaston Foote

Frank Richardson

 

 

 

Southwestern

 

Finis Crutchfield, District Superintendent of the Corsicana District

Homer Fort, First Methodist Beaumont

The Honorable Beaufort Jester, Governor of Texas

The Honorable Sam Rayburn, U. S. House of Representatives

Harold Egger, President of the Southwestern ex-students association

Craig Cullinan, Houston,

 

The practice of awarding honorary degrees has declined in recent years.

 

This Week In Texas Methodist History  December 13, 2020

 

 

Texas Conference Passes Resolutions Concerning Pioneer Texas Methodist Preachers Alexander and Thrall

 

Two of the most prominent Texas Methodist preachers of the Republic Era were Robert Alexander and Homer Thrall.  Alexander arrived in 1837 as the first of the three officially appointed preachers to the Texas Mission.  Thrall came as one of the volunteers from Ohio in 1842. 

 

By 1875 they had outlived most of their early colleagues, and both were the subject of resolutions passed during the Texas Annual Conference that met at Brenham December 8-13, 1875.

 

Alexander’s resolution was a thanksgiving for his seemingly miraculous escape from death the previous September during one of the worst hurricanes in recorded Texas history.  Robert and Eliza had sold their Cottage Hill Ranch in northern Austin County near the site of the 1834 and 1835 Caney Creek Camp Meetings and moved to Perkins Island at the upper end of Galveston Bay.  Alexander ran cattle and remained active in church affairs, sometimes taking a skiff down to Galveston where Eliza’s father, David Ayres, lived and the site of Methodist publishing in Texas.  He participated in the meetings establishing Southwestern University in the offices of the publishing operations.

 

Things did not go well.  Alexander was gored by a bull and received an injury that plagued him the rest of his life.  In September 1875 the hurricane wiped the island clean, including the Alexander house.  The family lived three days in the branches of a tree waiting for help to arrive.  First reports said they all perished. 

 

The resolution declared that their being saved was a gift from God and wished everyone to know about the marvelous works of providence.

 

The occasion of the Thrall resolution was his decision to transfer to the West Texas (today’s Rio Texas) Conference.  He had already written the first of his five books, History of Methodism in Texas (1872) and had been part of most of the significant events of Methodist history.  He had cultivated the friendship of such famous people as Emily Austin Perry, Mirabeau B. Lamar, Anson Jones, and Henry Smith.  He attributed his interest in Texas history to his conversations with these and other “old timers”. 

Thrall stayed within the bounds of the West Texas Conference after this transfer and died in San Antonio in 1894. 

 

 

 

This Week in Texas Methodist History December 6

 

Texas and East Texas Conferences Reunite in Crockett, Dec. 3-8, 1902

 

The Texas Conference was organized in 1840. Just 4 years later the General Conference recognized that enough growth had occurred that the conference could be split into two.  For two years the conferences were named Western Texas and Eastern Texas, but the organizational conference of the MECS renamed them East Texas and West Texas.  The boundary was the Trinity River.  The Northeastern counties that had been part of Arkansas Conference became part of the East Texas Conference. 

 

As population in Texas increased, other divisions were made.  What is today the Rio Texas Conference was struck off from the Texas Conference in 1858.  Suring Reconstruction the northern part of the East Texas Conference was struck off to create what is today the North Texas Conference, and the present Central Texas and Northwest Texas Conferences were created from the Texas Conference.    By 1900 the East Texas and Texas Conferences lagged far behind the North and Northwest Texas Conferences in membership.  The 1902 MECS General Conference authorized the reunion of the conferences that had been split in 1844.

 

The reunited Conference met in Crockett, near the center of the new conference from Dec. 3-8, 1902.As part of the authorizing legislation the former Austin District in the Texas Conference was transferred to what is today the Rio Texas Conference.

 

One of the most important aspects of the new conference for us today is that the 1902 Journal contained a pictorial directory of the members of both predecessor conferences.  Those images were reproduced in the 1934 Centennial Yearbook, so they are widely available. 

 

When I look at the images, I see two preachers who lived long enough for me to know them in my childhood and youth.  Jesse Lee (Clifford’s grandfather) was admitted in 1902.  John Goodwin (Sen. John Tower’s grandfather) was also a member in 1902.  Because of my father’s habit of making calls on retired preachers, I visited both men in their homes in their retirement. 

 

The old East Texas Conference reported as its final statistics:

Local preachers—88

Members—21,344

Epworth Leagues—55

Sunday Schools—186

Number of societies (churches)--263

Number of Church buildings—195

(That’s right.  Not every church had its own building.)

Pastoral charges—89

Parsonages—80

Total value of parsonages--$80,650

 

For comparison, the old Texas Conference reported the following:

 

Local preachers—136

Members—39,966

Epworth Leagues—24

Sunday Schools—282

Number of Church buildings—311

Parsonages—88

Total value of parsonages--$86,700

 

The districts in the new Texas Conference were as follows”

 

Beaumont

 

Houston

Brenham

Calvert

San Augustine

Huntsville

Palestine

Marshall

Tyler

Pittsburg