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.