This Week in Texas Methodist History   April 2

Presiding Elder Mack Henson Tells How He Travels His District   1891

One of the most common themes of Methodist history is travel.  We have numerous accounts of circuit riders, presiding elders, and bishops who detailed how they traveled to the churches and conferences to which they were appointed and assigned.  One of my favorite eras of such accounts is the 1880s and 1890s in the full bloom of rail transportation.  Those decades saw rail replace horseback as the main transportation for presiding elders and bishops.  Within the lifetime of some people living then, auto and airplane replaced rail.

I am always amazed at how quickly the rail network was built in Texas abd would like to share how the Austin District Presiding Elder of the West Texas Conference of the MEC  travelled his district. 

The P, E. was Mack Henson.  He was obligated to hold quarterly conferences in his district that included most of Travis, Burnet, Lampasas, Bell, Milam, and Robertson Counties.   There were dozens of small churches in his district serving the needs of the African American Methodists in those counties.

Starting in Autin he would travel the Northwestern Narrow Guage to Burnet through Cedar Park, Leander, Liberty Hill, Bertram, and then on to Marble Falls.  The 30 inch rail had been constructed in 1881 using lighter rail and local cedar ties rather than the conventional standard guage.  It became famous and infamous for hauling the 30,000 pound granite blocks from Granite Mountain to Austin to build the Capitol.  I say infamous because the rail was not strong enough for the load, and there were frequent derailments.  The blocks just lay where they fell.   The R.O.W is now part of the communter line.

The ride from Austin to Burnet took 5 hours from 6:30 a.m to 11:30. a.m.  From Burnet he could take the mail train to Lampasas where he could catch the Gulf Coast and Santa Fe to Milano Junction (today Milano).  The line intersected to International and Great Northern which took him  to Hearne where he could catch the Houston and Texas Central to Calvert.  

To reach the other part of his district he would go to Georgetown via Round Rock and then on to Belton.

Some private conveyance was required to serve Davilla and Milam Grove,  but this route also put him on the Missouri Kansas Texas (Katy).   

What a network of railroads---the MKT, GC SF, Houston and Texas Central, Northwestern Narrow Guage--all to serve the district.  

 This Week in Texas Methodist History March 19

Dean Eugene Hawk of SMU Creates Student Pastor Group March 1942

The entrance of the United States into World War II created a demand for military chaplains.  Texas Methodists stepped up to the plate and dozens of young Methodist ministers entered the chaplaincy.  The exit of these preachers meant that local church pulpits needed to be filled.  One obvious source of pastors was the School of Theology at SMU later to be named Perkins School of Theology.  The Dean of the schools then was Eugene Hawk who had recently served as pastor of First Methodist Church in Fort Worth.  

He had achieved recognition in that post for completing the new sanctuary for that congregation even in the midst of the Depression.  Hawk was so proud of the Ft. Worth sanctuary that he hired a bus to take seminary students on a field trip to see it.

As more seminary students took employment in churches, Hawk felt that a support group was needed so that students serving churches would have a forum to talk about their difficulties in juggling school and work.  

Fifty-one students joined the new organization.  Thirty-five of them were serving as pastors.  The rest were working as youth pastors, choir directors, counselors, etc.  Fourteen of the fifty-one had positions in Dallas.  The others had to travel.  One went to Oklahoma.  Since most of the appointments were rural circuits with multiple churches, the thirty-five preachers served one hundred and eight churches.  At their first meeting they calculated the miles driven per month to meet their preaching assignments.  The total was 36,750 miles.  Assuming they went to their churches four times per month, the figure is not unreasonable.  One should remember that war time rationing for tires and fuel made personal automobile travel more difficulty.  On the other hand, there was a more robust bus service then.  My father served the Dekalb circuit and rode the bus to get there, sleeping all the way back to Dallas every Sunday night.  

The officers included Leo Allen, President; Roy Bagley, Vice President; and Wilson Canafax, secretary.  

The whole purpose of the club was to discuss problems the young ministers were having in their jobs.  

The Dallas District Superintendent, Harry DeVore, met with them to guide them through the discussion of their problems.  

 This Week in Texas Methodist History March 5

Reports Show Impact of World War II Industrialization on Church Membership   March 1943

One of the most dramatic demographic movements in Texas history was caused by the industrialization during World War II.   Hundreds of thousands of Texans moved to take advantage of new war industries and those industries also attracted non-Texans.  Obviously the large cities gained the most new residents, but even some rural churches saw their membership balloon.  

After the November 1942 annual conferences, the Journals for those conferences were printed.  For those of you not familar with Journals, they contain the minutes of the conference, committee reports, and statistics---pages and pages of statistics.   In March 43 the Journal of the Texas Conference was available and the editors of the Advocate deciced to run a story on all the Texas Conference churches that had added at least one hundred new members from Novembeer 1941 to November 1942.  As you might expect, Houston was well represented.  Bering, First, Epworth, St. Paul's, Reed Memorial, St. Andrew's, Epworth, Northside, Grace, and West University all claimed gains in membership of greater than one hundred.  So too did other coastal churches such as First Galveston, First Beaumont, and Port Arthur Temple.  Newcomers on the coast included smaller cities that benefitted from the construction of wartime industries.  They included Freeport and Goose Creek (Baytown).   Marvin Tyler and First Longview all had similar gains.  

The real surprise though was the cluster of rural churches that were near the East Texas Oil Field concentrated in Gregg County but extending into neighboring counties such as Rusk County.  Carlisle, Harleton, and Overton all reported more than 100 new members received in that one year.  

To be fair, most of the membership growth was based on transfers from membership in an existing church so the net membership gain was not as spectacular as the raw data would suggest.  In short, Texan moved their membership from rural churches to urban ones and it zeroed out.  The one exception in the whole list was Carlisle.  Of all the 23 churches on the list only Carlisle reported more new members who came with vows instead of transfer.  They reported 86 new members by vows and 26 by transfer.  

From November 1941 to November 1942 Pastor J. B. Waggoner had baptized 58 adults and 11 infants, not bad for a church that reported 410 members.  After such a spectacular year, he was appointed to Karnack at the 1942 annual conference and was replaced by A. A. Leifeste, one of pastors who had come into the new Texas Conference in 1939 from the German branch of Methodism.  As a trivia note, the Annual Conference delegate from Karnack in 1942 was T. J. Taylor---Lady Bird Johnson's father.  

Don't confuse this Carlisle with the one in Trinity County.  This is the Carlisle in Rusk County.  You might not know about it because in 1940 the town changed its name to Price.    The name Carlisle stays on in the school district.