This Week in Texas Methodist History Ocotber 30 Fifty-eighth Session of Texas Conference of MEC Meets at Boynton Chapel, Houston, October 31-Nov. 3 , 1923 The Methodisty Epsicoapl Church was excluded from Texas during the Civil War, but in 1865 the work resumed. On Christmas Day 1865 an organizational meeting was held in New Orleans to create a new annual conference whose boundaries would include the states of Texas, Lousiana, and Mississippi. In January 1867 Texas was severed from that conference to assume its status as its own annual conference. Work among African Americans spread quickly in Texas and before a decade passed, Texas was able to support two annual conferences, the Texas and the West Texas. Those conferences continued with almost no alterations to their boundaries until General Conference action of 1968 abolished the race-based annual conferences. From October 31 to November 3 the Texas Annual Conference met in Boynton Chapel MEC in Houston. It was presided over by Bishop R. E. Jones of the New Orelans area. On Wednesday, the third day of the conference, Bishop Isiah B. Scott entered the church to tremendous applause. A word of explanation is in order. Although the MEC organized African American Confences in the United States during the Reconstruction Era, those confernces were presided over by European- American bishops. There were African American MEC bishops, but they were designated as “Missionary Bishops” and presided over conferences outside the United States such as the famous Liberia Confernce. The MEC General Conference of 1920 changed that rule and two African American Methodist preachers were elected who had the authority to preside over domestic confernces. Those two new bishops were Jones and Scott. Jones had been elected from his post as editor of the denominational newspaper published in New Orleans and Scott from an academic post. They were joined in Houston by three ofther African Ameerican Mehtodists preachers who became even more prominent in later years. Matthew Dogan was president of Wiley College in Marshall, the jewel in the crown of the conference. Dogan had become president of Wiley in 1896 when the former president I. B. Scott had been named editor of the Advocate. Dogan was to remain president until his retirement in 1942. He was a delegate to every General Confeerence from 1904 to 1940. Another college president was also there---Willis King of Gammon in Atlanta, Georgia. King was to be elecced bisop in 1944. King’s visit trip to Houston and the Texas Conference was a homecoming. He had received deacon’s orders in the Texas Conference in 1908. He was ordained elder in 1913 and served churches in Greeville, Gavesotn, and Houston. The Houston appointment was to Trinity in1918 and he went to Gammon from that appointment. The third prominent preacher also held a doctorate from Boston University—J. L Farmer. In 1923 he was a Rust College in Mississippi but would later come to Texas at both Wiley and Samuel Huston College. His son, James Farmer became even more famous as the founder of CORE. Both Farmers, Senior and Junior are portrayed in the hit movie, The Great Debaters. What an exicitng annual conference that brought together such a distinguished group of preachers!

Jefferson Methodists Send Mexican Silver to New York to Cast into Church Bell, 1854 Jefferson, Texas, the county seat of Marion County, is rightly proud of its history. During the steamboat era, it was one of the most prosperous cities in Texas. Its connections via Big Cypress Bayou, Caddo Lake, and the Red River to New Orleans made it a bustling port city and the entrepot for immigrants to northeastern Texas. Jefferson was also an early Methodist center. The present church dates to the steamboat era and there is a fascinating tale related to the church. As related on the church website, in 1854 the members desired a bell for the church and wanted one with a “silvery tone.” Bells of the era were often cast from molten metals, and the composition of the metal alloy was crucial to the tone of the bell. Jeffereson Methoists collected $1500 in “Mexican dollars” and wanted the silver in those coins to be part of the bell metal. In order to ensure that the coin metal was actually used in the bell, it is reported that J. C. Murphy accompanied the coins to New Orleans to insure that that they would properly laded on the ship to New York and the Menneley Bell Foundry. Another version of the tale reports that a committee accompanied the coins. In either case, the steamboat trip to New Orleans would have been relatively simple. Regular passage from New Orleans to Jefferson was common in 1854, thanks to Captain Henry Shreve’s clearing the raft of logs on the Red River in 1836. The clearing of the raft was the basis for naming the new major river port in his honor—Shreveport. It had the secondary effect of moving much of the traffic of Nachitoches upstream to that new city. The steamboat era in Texas was relatively brief. Railroads were the future and in the railroad era Marshall displaced Jefferson as the main entrepot to northeastern Texas, The reader will be glad to know that the bell was delivered and still peals its silvery tones over the historic city of Jefferson.

This Week in Texas Methodist History October 15 Texas Mexican Mission District Makes Huge Leap Forward with Admission of Four New Preachers, October 16, 1878 Bishop John C. Keener presided over the West Texas Conference from October 16-21, 1878 in San Marcos. One of the most gratifying aspects of the conference was the admission of four new preachers for the Mexican Mission District of that Conference. They were to provide years of faithful service that eventually resulted in a Spanish-speaking annual conference, and then even more conferenences. Alejo Hernandez became a preacher in 1871 but his life was all too short. He died in September 1875. New ministerial recruits were desperately needed. The Presiding Elder of the Mexican Mission District of the West Texas Conference was A. H. Sutherland (1848-1917). His district was strengthened in 1878 when four men, Jose Policarpo Rodriguez, Metilde Trevino, Alejandro DeLeon, and Roman Polomares joined the conference On Trial. Crecencio Rodrigues and Cruz Rodriguez remained on trial after being admitted the previous year. Four men were admitted into full connection James Tafolla, Gumercendo Paz, Josue Acosta, and Trinadad Armindarez. Only one member of the district, Clemente Vivero, withdrew from the ministry. The preaching points of the Mexican Mission District in1878 were concentrated in southern Texas and also included churches in Mexico. San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Bandera, Lodi, Rio Grande City, Brownsville, Medina County, Mier, Carmargo, Laredo, Concepcion, Eagle Pass, and Brackettville, San Diego, and Hidalgo County all had Methodist Churches. Many of these churches still exist and can proudly point to abut 150 years of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We bless their memory. (note: it is obvious that the Confeernce Secretary was not all that fluent in Spanish, but I have left the spelling as he recorded them in the Conference Journal.)

This Week in Texas Methodist History October 9 Steve McKinney Celebrates Unity of Methodism with Poem, October 1939 Samuel Stephen (Steve) McKenney (1876-1976) was one of the most prominent members of the Texas Conference during the first half of the 20th century. He was born to a large family in Virginia with poor prospects for advancement but was sent to Baltimore to learn cabinet making. It is good for Texas that he did not stick with that craft. An insurance company in Baltimore hired him and sent him to Texas. He joined the Texas Confence in 1901 and received more prominent appointments. He is remembered in Houston as the founder of Grace Methodist and pastor of St. Paul’s. He also served Tyler Marvin, Port Arthur Temple, First Wichita Falls, First Longview, First Galveston, First Marshall and presiding elder of three districts. He was also a delegate to the Uniting Conference of 1939 in Kansas City in which the Methodist Church was created by the merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Protestant Church, and the Methodist Episcopasl Church South. One of the preachers at the 1939 Conference was Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes of the MEC. His theme was the new unity of Methodists. McKenney was so impressed that he celebrated the sermon with a poem. I will not reproduce all of The Methodists are One People here but some parts of it are really interesting. It begins Know all people by these presents The Methodists are one. Our Uniting task is finished though our work is just begun Widely scattered and divided, all our plans were yet undone Through years of separation till we were at last made one. McKenney goes on through four more stanzas. McKenney was blessed with long life. Even after retirement, he served at Houston Epworth. Eventually he moved to Moody House in Galveston where he died at age 89.

This Week in Texas Methodist History Oct 2 Walter Vernon Moves to Nashville but Keeps his Heart in Texas, October 1938 Readers of this column already know about the career of Walter N. Vernon, Jr. (1907-1993) Few people have done more for Texas Methodist History than Vernon. His life began in a Methodist parsonage in Verdin, Oklahoma, His family moved to Paris, Texas in 1911 and Walter graduated from Paris High School. He earned three degrees from SMU and was appointed to Lakewood Methodist Church in Dallas. In addition to his pastoral duties, he threw himself into religious journalism. His significant contributions to the Soutwestern Christian Advocate caught the attention of editors of the Christian Advocate, the main denominational organ of the MECS. In October 1938 Vernon moved to Nashville as Associate Editor of the Advocate and also on staff of the General Board of Education after the creation of the Methodist Church. In 1953e was promoted to secretary of the curriculum committee putting him in charge of all church school publicatons. Even with these responsibilities, he produced the most significant history books about Texas and Arkansas Methodism of his era. His Methodism Moves across North Texas (1967), a biography of Bishop Paul Martin (1973), and Methoism mvoes Across Arkansas (1976) were a prelude to his leadership role in the Methodist Excitement in Texas (1984) with three other authors. His historical expertise was greatest in the area in which he was raised===northeast Texas, southeast Oklahoma, and southwest Arkansas, but his intimate association with Texas Methodist across the years gave him a larger perspective. The Texas United Methodist Historical Society, of which Vernon was a founder, honors his memory with the Walter Vernon Essay Contest.