This Week in Texas Methodist History, January 17

 

Keziah Payne DePelchin Named Shearn Organist January 26

 

One of the most remarkable women in Texas Methodist history, Keziah Payne DePelchin (1828-1893), was hired as the organist for Shearn Methodist Church (today Houston First Methodist Church) during the pastorate of Rev. A. H. Werlein.   She accepted a salary of $12 per month and kept the job only briefly, turning the position over to Miss Carro Bryan. 

 

DePelchin was born in the Portuguese Madeira Islands and spent her early years in England.  When she was still a child, her mother died, and the family moved first to New York and then to Galveston.  We know that she was in Galveston by 1837.  Her name appears on the roll of the charter members of the Methodist church in Galveston.  Her father remarried, but then died in a yellow fever epidemic.  Keziah also contracted the disease, but survived.  The acquired immunity from yellow fever played an important part in the rest of her life.  She worked in various hospitals as a nurse in other epidemics. 

 

She and her step mother arrived in Houston by 1841.  She worked as a music teacher and spent much time as a nurse, including working with charity patients.  She married Adolph DePelchin in Bastop in 1862.  They had no children, and although they did not divorce, the marriage ended.

 

Besides being head nurse at the Houston Charity hospital, in 1888 she became Matron of the Bayland Orphan’s Home for Boys.   The home had recently moved from the west side of Galveston Bay, near Morgan’s Point to Houston. 

 

She also found time to open Houston’s first day care center, charging ten cents per day to working women who needed child care.  When she died on January 13, 1893, she had to be buried at public expense, but her legacy lives on in the  DePelchin Children's Center which carries on her legacy of service with a wide variety of programs.