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