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.