Macum Phelan Announces Retirement December 1939. Macum Phelan was one of the most prominent Texas Methodist historians of the first half of the twentieth century. His two volumes on the history of Methodism in Texas was the second attempt at such a project, the first being that of Homer Thrall in the 19th century. Local church historians still consult both of Phelan’s volumes even through Phelan was able to consult far fewer resources than contemporary historians. Macum Phelan wrote his two volumes while serving as a pastor so he eas not able to devote his full attention to historical writing. Phelan had been born in Tennessee but was orphaned and moved to Waco to live with two older brothers. He worked as a cowhand and earned enough to attend the University of Texas to obtin a teacher’s certificate. He taught several years but received the call to preach and entered the old Northwest Texas Conference before its 1910 division into the Central and Nortwest Texas Conference. He served a number of churches including Roscoe, Baird, and Chilicothe, Childress, and Big Spring before transferring to California. He transferred back to Texas and served Hamilton, Haslet, and Crawford and served the Vernon District. He retired at age 65 in 1939 and wrote a letter to A. J. Weeks, editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate to tell his friends to stop at his retirement home in Birdville to visit him. In that same letter he mentioned that he intended to keep writing and had already written his autobriography which included the “tragedy of California.” The autobiography was not published, and I have not seen the manuscript so I don’t know what happened in Calfironia. Hus later efforts at writing were hindered by his blindness, and he dided of a brian tumor in Fort Worth in 1950. -

This Week in Texas Methodist History December 18 Three MEC Conferences Meet in San Antonio to Complete Merger, December 1926 Previous posts have highlighted the fact that one hundred years ago the MEC had five annual conferences with churches in Texas. Two of them, the Texas and West Texas, had African American members. There were also German, Swedish, and English speaking churches for European-Ameericans. Both the German and Gulf Conferences included churches in Louisiana, but the Swedish Confernce did not. The 1924 General Confernce of the MEC authorized a merger of the three conferences, and the merger was approved by each of the three conferences meeing in San Antonio in December 1926. Three MEC bishops (Neulsen, Mead, and Waldorp) presided over the three conferences during business sessions, but in the late afternoon all three confernces convened in Trinity MEC church for joint worship services. The Southern Gernman Confernce was one of 8 US and 4 European Conferences using the German Language at the time. There were some interesting resolutions that had to be acted upon by the delegates. First the name had to be changed. It was easy for the the Southern German Conference. The name of the new conference would simply be the Southeern Conference. They also had to decided to discontinue printing the Journal in both English and German. The 1926 Journal is a mixed bag of both hEnglish and German, but starting in 1927, the Journal would be in English. There was also the problem of historical continuity. Should the annual conference of 1927 be designated as the first session or the fifty-fifth session? The Southern German Conference had been organized in 1872. Would the new conference be considered a continuation of that conference or a compoletely new one? They decided to call the 1927 conferenbce the 55th. Another question was wheter the Confernce Newspaer, the Texas Stern could continue to publish in German. The answer was that it could. It lasted more than another decade after the merger. Each of the three conferences owned a college. The Gulf Conference actually owned two, Port Arthur College and Alvinn College. The Swedes owned Texas Wesleyan in Austin, and the Germans owned Blinn in Brenham. How each of those colleges would be supported was a question that would be deferred. Evenually Blinn, Port Arthur, and Alvin became public junior colleges. By contrast the German Mission Conference of the MECS had already been folded into the English speaking conferences of Texas. The last session had occurred in November 1918 at New Fountain. That was a completely different matter. As noted above, the MEC had about a dozen English speaking conferences, but the MECS’s only German speaking conference was the one in Texas. That meant that that the MEC could justify a vigorous publishing effort in the German language, but the MECS could not. The MECS often used MEC literature.

Methodists Learn That Tyler Airport Renamed in Honor of Methodist Airman Who Died in Crash, December 1943 Many East Texans would know about the Tyler airport, Pounds Field, but perhaps they do not know that the man being honored by that name was a Methodist with considerable family ties to the church. Jack Windham Pounds was born in Tyler in 1917 to Abe Pounds and Isabella Windham Pounds. His short life ended March 4, 1942 at Lemoore Army Air Field in California. Second Lt. Pounds was a flight instructor who was flying a Vultee BT-13A Valliant at the time. One should note that this was only three months after Pearl Harbor so Lt. Pounds was one of the first fatalities of World War II. The airport had existed since 1929 as a municipal airport serving the nascent aviation industry in Texas. In 1941 the Department of Commerce entered into an agreement with the City of Tyler to upgrade the facilities. Those improvement included hangars, new runways, and barracks that would accommodate 2000 persons. As part of the agreement the city of Tyler would continue to use the facility for civilian purposes. The Tyler Field was one of the smaller installations that related to Barksdale Field in Louisiana, and in March 1943, detachments were sent from Barksdale to Tyler to complete further improvements including a control tower and a PX. The field also benefitted from the large concentration of nurseries in the area as ornamental plants were incorporated into the design. In November 1943 the name was changed and the field was dedicated as Pounds Field. The first training was for bombers, but in 1944 the focus shifted to training observation and reconnaissance missions. Many of the training functions at Pounds Field were transferred to other installations even before the end of the war, and the transition to civilian use was smooth. At least one of the World War II buildings survives as a museum. The Pounds and Windham families are so prominent in Texas Methodist history that I will save them for another week. Personal memory----Pounds Field is directly west of Pleasant Retreat Methodist Church which my father was serving when I was born. One of my earliest memories is of the rotating light from the conrol tower sweeping through our dining room window every night, all night long.

This Week In Texas Methodist History December 4 Texas Conference Meets in Crockett, December 3-8, 1902 The Texas Annual Conrference met in Crockett from December 2 to 8, 1902 with Bishop Eugene Hendrix presiding. This was a special session of conference because the 1902 General Conference of the MECS redrew the boundaries of conferences in Texas and the East Texas Conference was combined with the Texas Conference. As you know, the Texas Conference was created in 1840, and in 1844 was divided into two new conferences. The Trinity River was the boundary between them. The East Texas Confernce was thus in existence from 1844 to 1902. The Texas population was moving west during this period and several new confeences were created and boundaries were constantly being redrawn. To address the populatin imbalance among the conferences the Texas and East Texas were reunited. Also as part of the boundary changes the Austin District of the Texas Confeence was shifted to the West Texas (today Rio Texas) Conference. The General Conference met in May so the preachers had from May to December to get ready for the new boundaries. The conference site of Crockett was just a few miles from the Trinity which had been the former dividing line so it was somewhat central. There were 167 preachers on the conference roll and 20 probationers. In addition there were 40 lay delegates. Lay delegates in this era were from districts rather than churches so every church did not have a lay delegate. Perhaps because the two conferences were being cobined, the Journal Editors, D. H. Hotchkiss and J. T. Smith published a pictoral director in the Journal---making the 1902 Journal a collector’s item. Not all of the 167 preachers and 40 lay delegates are included, but a fair number are. There are two future bishops, Sam Hay and Seth Ward. There are two Methodist historians, John E. Green and Elijah Shettles. The younger men are all clean shaven and many of the older men have full bushy beards. One amazing fact is that I met two of the preachers in the pictoral directory, Jesse Lee and John Goodwin. They were both retired, and Lee was bed ridden with a stroke. My father would take me on many pastoral visits. The Goodwins had retired to Atlanta where my father served, and I still rember playing of the floor of their retirement home living room. Both men had grandsons you may have known. Jesse Lee was the grandfather of Clifford Lee, once president of Lon Morris College. Goodwin was the grandfather of Senator John Goodwin Tower. John’s other grandfather, C. A. Tower is also in the directory but he died before I was born so I never met him. There are other familiar names in 1902 such as an Elrod, and one of the lay delegates was J. D. Campbell, grandfather of the Jeff Campbell. The directory also has pictures of two more people you might know, Littleton Morris Fowler, named for his father and Bishop Morris, and A. J. Weeks, later editor of the Advocate.