This Week in Texas Methodist History March 21

 

Atlanta Lay Couple Donates 14,000 Empty Fruit Jars to Methodist Home, March 1936

 

The Methodist Home in Waco is one of the most popular and widely-known Methodist institutions in Texas.  It began as an orphanage but has since evolved into a full service provider for many types of child services.

 

One of the main continuities in the history of the Methodist Home has been its grassroots support.  As one reads back issues of its Sunshine magazine, one is always impressed with the number of donors from small towns, large cities, and all in between.  Its radio program featuring Let the Sun Shine In sung by residents of the Home was a popular feature in radio-era Texas. 

 

In March 1936 Mrs. and Mrs. R,. P. Willis of Atlanta, Texas, challenged Texas Methodists to support the Home with a matching gift---well, sort of a matching gift---that would multiply the donation. 

 

The lay couple who served as financial agents in the Texarkana District for the Home bought a box car load of fruit jars ---14,000 jars costing $1500 that had the name of the Methodist Home molded into the glass.  The jars were ½ gallon, and when filled with canned meat, vegetables, and fruit would be worth about $4200.   

 

In 1936 rural electrification was just beginning.  Instead of electrical freezers, families often put preserved their produce and meat by canning it.   The corn, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches, pears, figs, and other canned goods preserved during harvest season fed the family through the winter.  In the fall, at butchering time, the canning equipment was used to preserve beef and pork. 

 

Most farm families knew how to can, but during the New Deal, Home Demonstration agents spent a great deal of their time teaching the skill---after all, improperly canned foods could harbor the toxin botulism.  Some communities established communal canneries where families who could not afford canning equipment could come and can.  The cannery in Brenham still exists and has been repurposed into a restaurant in which vocational food service skills are taught. 

 

Individuals who sent filled jars to Waco would receive a certificate of participation in the project.   Mr. Willis proudly reported that one Cass County family had already earned 7 certificates, both parents and five children had supplied cans.  It was a way that cash-strapped families in the Depression could continue to support a worthy cause.

 

 

In-kind donations to the Home were nothing new.  Reports from even earlier in the 20^th century show donations of dish towels, preserves, and a box car load of good coastal prairie hay from Wharton County for the Home’s dairy herd. 

 

 

Personal Note:   My father was later appointed to Atlanta so I knew members of the Willis family.  The parsonage, directly across from the church, in town, had a large garden.  Its yard was full of pecan trees.  I had some of my very early vegetable and nut production experience there.

 

Note 2:   The Willis family also donated the Infirmary at Lakeview.  It is named in their honor.  

Note 3:   I inherited my grandmother's canning equipment--still use it, but to prepare fruit for the freezer, not for canning.