This Week in Texas Methodist History  December 10

Snapshot of East Texas Conference, First Week of December 1879

The East Texas Conference of the MECS convened in Palestine in December 1879 with Bishop McTyeire still absent.   In his absence R. S. Finley gaveled the members to order.  Nominations for chair and secretary were approved and the roll was perfected.  

The next morning the Bishop had arrived so he assumed the chair and the real business of the conference could begin.  The business of the conference would look very familiar---as a matter of fact, much of it was identical to annual conferences of the present.  Candidates for ordination would be presented, the character of members was passed on, committees gave their reports, and of course appointments were read.  

I wanted to provide a snapshot of the state of the conference through the statistical tables.  

There were four districts.   Marshall, Palestine, San Augustine, and Beaumont were the four district seats.  The total number of members was 14,212.  There were also 149 local preachers who would not be included in that number.  There had been 1193 infant baptisms and 718 adult baptisms.   87 members had been expelled by action of church conferences.  There were only 5 stations (Marshall, Palestine, Carthage, Jasper, and Tyler).  A station was a church that was large enough to support a full-time pastor.  All the other appointments were to circuits in which the preacher served multiple "preaching points".  these circuits were aggregated in the statistics, and many of them totaled more members than the stations.  For example, in the Marshall District Marshall Station (later First Methodist) had 199 members, but the Starrville Circuit had 475.  Tyler Station (later Marvin had 179 members, and the Athens Circuit had 542.  Even cities that would later grow to have several churches were on a circuit.  For example Beaumont and Orange shared a preacher.  The appointment reporting the largest membership was the Homer Circuit with 700 members.  One of the frustrations of historians is that the preaching points on the circuits are not listed in these 19th century journals.  Perhaps doing so would be cumbersome because the large number of churches on a circuit.  As late as the 1920s my grandfather served 6 churches on the Hallsville Circuit and in the 1940s, my father served 5 churches on the DeKalb Circuit. (while also living in Dallas and attending seminary.)   In the 20th century as more stations were created and the number of churches on circuits declined, Journals began listing the preaching points on a circuit.