This Week in Texas Methodist History April 17 General Conference Meets in New York City April 1844 The Methodist Episcopal Church’s 1844 General Conference which met in New York City in Apirl, has been the subject of more historical scholarship that any other mid-19th century General Conference. Most of that scholarship has been focused on the North-South split over slavery that set in motion the events that led to the formal creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church South two years later. The sectional denominations did not reunite until 1939. In addition to the conflict over slavery, the General Confeernce also had to consider all the other General Confernce business, and some of those actions involved Texas. The Texas Confernce had been founded in December 1840 and was less than 4 years old in April 1844. Its comparative small membership entitled it to only two delegates. Those delegates were Littleton Fowler, one of the original commissioned missionaries who arrived in Texas from Alabama in 1837. The other was John Clark who had been recruited from Illinois by Bishop Morris in the fall of 1841 and joined the Texas Conference in December of that year. Fowler had chosen to travel to New York via the river system available at the time and made a special effort to stop off in Cincinnati to console the parents of William O’Connor one of the six Ohio preachers Fowler had recruited in 1842 for Texas. O’Connor died soon after his arrival in Texas and is buried at Marshall. Fowler wrote several letters home from his travel and also from New York that are preserved in the Fowler Collection at SMU. One of them records his lunch visit in New York with Schuyler Hoes whom he had known in Texas because Hoes was employed as a agent of the American Bible Society. Hoes returned to upstate New York appalled by the slavery he had seen in Texas. Clark became famous as the only delegate from the South to vote with the Northern delegates on the issue of slavery (or more precisely the legality of a bishop owning slaves). His vote spurred such vituperative condemnation that he feared for his life if returned to Texas so he prudently stayed in the North, eventually ending up back in Chicago. The defense of his position, published in the New York Christian Advocate, prompted the Brenham Preacher, Robert B. Wells, to found a newspaper to respond to Clark. That paper was the earliest Methodist journalistic effort in Texas. A lay woman from Texas, Lydia McHenry, travelled all the way to New York City to watch the proceedings from the gallery. Although none of her letters home from New York survive, a letter she wrote en route does survive in the Chicago Historical Soceity---it was from Washington D. C, where she stopped to visit her cousin, U. S. Representative John Hardin. Hardin served one term, then turned the seat over to his friend Abraham Lincoln who also served one term in the U. S. House of Representtives. The most direct action the General Conference took which dealt with Texas was splitting the Texas Conference into the Western Texas Confernce and the Eastern Texas Conference (later renamed the Texas and East Texas Conferences). The dividing line would be the Trinity River. That decision in 1844 is the reason the Metroplex is divided between two United Methodist Conferences with Dallas in the North Texas and Fort Worth in the Central Texas Confernce. Two bishops were elected---Edmund Janes (1807-1876) and Leonidas Hamline (1797-1865). Janes became one of the most influential bishops of the 19th century because of his 32 year tenure as bishop. Hamline retired from active episcopal duties in 1852 because of poor health, but is better known because of Hamile Univversity in St. Paul, Minesota. It was customary for the youngest bishiops to be assigned the more arduous episcopal visitation schedule so Janes drew the assignment of presidng over the next session of the Texas Conference. He travelerd to St. Augustine where he had to assign preachers to one of the two confernces that now existed in Texas. There were many tears shed as preachers said goodbye to their collegeagues appointed to a difference conference than their own. Janes also presided over the vote of whether to participate in the movement to created a Southern brnch of the denomination. The journal reports that the vote was unammous, but when Bishops Janes left, he took with him his nephew, Lester Janes, who had been serving as the president of Wesleyan College in San Augustine. As you see, there was lots going on at the 1844 General Confernce besides the slavery dispute.

This Week in Texas Methodist History April `10 King Vivion Announces Building Fund for Student Work at A&M April 10, 1922 The relationship between Methodism and higher education is one of the most important threads to follow in the history of the denomination. Methodism originated on a university campus (Oxford), but when it came to America, there was resistance to an educated clergy, and the early decades of Methodism never considered constructing universities like Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians did. When the first Methodist college in America in Abingdon. Maryland, burned on Dec. 4, 1795 burned, some considered it a sign that God did not intend for Methodists to have colleges. Of course, Methodists did found colleges, seminaries, etc and decided to focus on general education rather than narrow theological studies. By the 1830s when Methodism official came to Texas, Methodism had a host of schools. As you remember from last week’s post, the head of the mission to Texas, Martin Ruter, resigned from a college presidency to lead the mission. With the exception of Virginia and North Carolina, the southern states were slow to develop public institutions of higher education. Texas did not do so until after the Civil War when it could take advantage of the Morrill Act provisions for establishing so called land grant colleges. Basically the ruling planter elite did not wish to tax themselves to support public education because they hired private tutors or sent their children to northern universities, Princeton being by far the favorite “Ivy” of the southern oligarchs. Although Texas was slow to fund public universities, it eventually did so, adding the University of Texas to complement the land grant A&M’s (at College Station and Prairie View) and an array of regional institutions called Normals to train teachers for the schools. Those Normals transitioned to State Teacher’s Colleges and now are all universities. Methodists wanted to supply spiritual guidance to students attending the public institutions, and a variety of methods were employed. A Methodist dormitory was constructed in Denton. A Bible Chair was funded in Austin with the director teaching classes for credit. In College Station a student pastor was appointed to the church who was directed to spend time with the young men attending A&M. In 1922 that pastor was King Viviion (James King Vivion 1896-1969) who had been holding evening services in the electrical engineering building at A&M sincve his arrival in 1919 from studies at SMU. In April 1922 he announced that he had raised $604 toward the cost of construction of a wooden building estimated to cost between $2500 and $4000 so that the ministry could have its own space. Vivion was success in completing the structure. Today the Wesley Foundation at A&M, a successor to that program is widely recognized as one of the top college student ministries in the entire UMC. In 1924 Vivion was appointed to Jacksonville (another college town) and then to First Galveston. In 1928 he assumed the presidency of Southwestern University in spite of his youth. Unfortunately Southwestern was hit by the impact of the Great Depression and his work as president was impeded by economics. Personal note: I never met King Vivion, but his younger brother, Monroe Vivion (1902-1978) was a prominent member of the Texas Conference in my childhood and youth.

This Week in Texas Methodist History April 3, 2022 April 3, 1785 Martin Ruter Born in Charlton, Massachusetts Today is the birthday of Martin Ruter leader of the first Methodist Mission to Texas. Ruter would be famous in Methodist history even if had not volunteered for the Texian Mission. As the denomination spilled over the Appalachian Mountains it became necessary to establish a publishing house to serve the western conferences. In 1820 Ruter was elected Head of the Book Cncern in Cincinnati. In that post he served as author, editor, revival speaker and since his office served as a post office for itinerant preachers, became acquainted with a huge percentage of preachers in the west. In addition to being a compelling preacher, linguist, author, editor, he was also a college president ----twice. He was already a main figure in 19th century Methodism when he resigned the presidency of Allegheny College to join two younger men, Robert Alexander and Littleton Fowler in spreading scriptural holiness across the religious desert that was Texas. Unfortunately Ruter’s life ended in Texas after only a few months in Texas. His legacy though remains enormous. I once made a pilgrimage to Charlton Massachusetts, the birthplace of Martin Ruter. I went first to the old Methodist church, built in 1903. The congregation had built a new facility and sold the old church building to a business specializing in quilting and other sewing supplies. I visited the old church, now with aisles of fabric, needles, thread, etc. Decorative quilts lined the walls except where the stained glass windows were still in place. The congregation had also left the organ behind. The proprietor of quilt store greeted me and after a conversation about my purpose in being there, asked if I would like an organ recital. Although the organ was not really the best, you can imagine the acoustics with all the fabric on the walls-----I requested old favorite hymns and as the organist played them, I thought about Martin Ruter.