This Week in Texas Methodist History January 22, 2023 Galveston Presiding Elder, Ed Harris Sets Goals for 1937, January 1937 Yesterday the West District of the Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church held a District Meeting. It was on Zoom. Not that long ago District Meetings were much more important in the life of the church. In the 1870s and 1880s they often lasted as long as five days. After all, it might take participants several days to get there and return home, so you might as well make the most of it with days of preaching. By the 1920s and 1930s District Meetings were still important, but were usually conducted in one day. Improvements in transportant had made it possible for particpants to go and return via either rail or private auto. The district lines had been redrawn to take advantage of rail transportation. For example, the small town of Calvert was a district seat because of its excellent location on the Houston and Texas Central just a few miles north of that line’s junction with the International and Great Northern Line in Hearne. The Galveston District included the obvious counties, Galveston, Wharton, Fort Bend, Matagorda, and some partf of Harris and Waller Counties, but it also included churches in Austin, Washington, and Burleson Counties. (Bellville, Brenham, and Caldwell). That was due to the route of the Gulf Coast and Santa Fe Railroad whose main line ran from Galveston to Temple. The Galveston District Meeting to set goals for 1937 was led by the Presiding Elder, Ed Harris who deserves our recognition. At any one time there are only a few preachers in our conference with a great interest in our history, and Ed Harris was one of those for his era. He was instrucmental in celebrating the Centennial of McMahon’s Chapel in 1934 and helped collect materials now housed in Bridwell Library at SMU relating to early Texas Methodism. In January 1937 Texas Methodists were between the two great celebrations of the era. In Novewmber 1936 all of the conferences in Texas met in Houston so they could celebrate the Texas Centennial of1936 and go to see the San Jancinto Monument. That monument had been made possible by funds from the U. S. government thanks to Secretary of Commerce and Chair of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Jesse H. Jones, a member of St. Paul’s Methodist in Houston. The architect was Alfred Finn, the architect for St. Paul’s and many other buildings in the Jones real estate portfolio. 1937 was also the year before the bicentennial of John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience. The actual date to be celebrated was in May 1938, but it was such a big deal, Methodists were already making plans for it. What were the goals Harris set our? He wanted every church in the district to have a revival. He wanted all benevolences paid in full. He wanted three missionary meeting during the year, and he wanted more support for thd Methodist Home in Waco. One should remember that this was during the Depression. Funds for missionary support had fallen dramatically, and missionaries had been recalled from foreign missions. The Methodist Home was in great need too. Some destiutute families could not afford to keep their children with them so they placed them in the home hoping for better days. One such Home resident was Billy Walker (b. 1929) from Ralls. His mother died when he was six and his father took him to the Home where he lived until he was old enough to do farm work. He later became a famous Country Western singer. The Methodist Home became a hugely popular charity for Methodists during this perios, and the appeal from Ed Harris was consistent with others across the state. On a personal note, I never met Ed Harris but much later I became friends with his son Bill who was a member of the Texas and Southwest Texas Conferereces. I knew about another participant in the Galveston District Meeting through my father. Although Harris preached the main sermon of the meeting, the meeting was closed with a message from a local preacher “Uncle Jim” Wilson. Although Wilson never was a full conference member, he was a greatly beloved Texas Methodist preacher. In later life, without a home of his own, he lived with partsonage families willing to take him in. One of those families during the 1930s was my grandparents when my grandfather was serving Brookshire/Fulshear/Pattison. The parsonage in Brookshire was large enough for my grandparents, my father, my two aunts, and a neice whose mother, my aunt, was a single parent unable to care for her daughter during the Depression. My father told me that Uncle Jim would show up with his suitcase and live for a while, then move on to anoter parsonage. My father was 12-14 years during the Brookshire pastorate and developed a deep affectiuon for Uncle Jim, often discussing news stories together as the octagenian read the newspaper.