Rockville, Ind., April 15th, '79.
The Men of Galveston Forty Years Ago. 124—Gail Borden was a collector of customs. He occupied a rambling old building near the landing. There was no wharf then. We rowed as near the shore as a small boat could go for the mud. Then, we mounted a sailor's back, and in this way he staggered out to dry land at the imminent risk of slipping on the slimy bottom and letting us down in the water. Gail lived then far out of town towards the Gulf. He made me feel at home whenever I was in town. He was one of the noblest men and friend of religion, although not then a member of a church. He was one of the first members of the Baptist Church, organized, I think, in 1841. Dr. Levi Jones was another staunch personal friend, at whose house I found a home whenever I was in town, after his family came to him in the summer of 1838. I had known him in Kentucky, where he was a medical student. He married a member of the church in which I was brought up.
Then, there was Moseley Baker, a many sided man, one of my most generous friends. He subscribed one thousand dollars to build the first church in Houston. His wife was a Presbyterian. He was then far from being a religious man. But in 1846 I met him in Kentucky. He was then a Methodist preacher and seemed truly a devout man.
McKinney and Williams were the principal business men of the place. [Thomas F.] McKinney was a man of extraordinary energy. He did not wait to be carried out from a boat on a sailor's back, but generally waded out. It was said of him, that wishing to go south from his home, away up on the Brazos river, the streams being high, he launched a pig trough on the Brazos and floated down to the Gulf.
The water of Galveston in those days was very poor. Cisterns were few. The shallow wells in the town were brackish; what was gathered in barrels in the [sand hills in the] Gulf shore was not much better. The rain water from the pond back of the town would get muddy. When the steamer from New Orleans came in, almost everybody rushed on board to get a drink of Mississippi water, and the water jar would be soon emptied.
Hugh Wilson. 125—Hugh Wilson was the pioneer minister of the Presbyterian Church in Texas. W. W. Hall had preceded him, but he was only a licentiate. He acted as Chaplain of the Senate during a part of the First Congress of the Republic, and then left the country and returned to Kentucky. But he organized no church and did no stated service of preaching. But Wilson went to Texas to stay. He had been associated with W. C. Blair in missionary service among Choctaw or Chickasaw Indians in Mississippi. He had a family, a wife and several daughters, as lovely a family as I ever met with. He entered the Red Lands, in 1837, and soon organized the First Presbyterian Church in Texas near San Augustine. In 1838, he removed to Independence, where I first met with him in 1839. He had already gathered a little band and organized a Church. He was then teaching in the Independence Academy. During my sojourn in Texas, I made him several visits, to assist him in preaching, and took part with him in the organization of the Brazos Presbytery, in 1840. In response to his suggestion, four of us, i. e., Wilson and McCullough and myself, ministers, and Elder McCorkle [John McFarland], met in a small school house near Capt. Chrisman's and soon completed the organization. The great evengelist, Daniel Baker, came along while we were together, and spent more than three weeks, including four Sabbaths, in preaching, sometimes together and sometimes apart. I went as far west as Fullers, 126 and Baker as far east as Washington. The results of these labors was the professed conversion of some thirty persons, many of whom united with the Presbyterian Church and some with the M. E. Church. Wilson had rather a feeble voice and hesitated in his speech, but he was sound in doctrine, and affectionate and persuasive in manner, and a man of loving spirit. I write this as a memorial of many pleasant hours spent in the family of Hugh Wilson. If any of his children are living, perhaps their eye may light on this slight tribute from an old friend of their father.
(Our Crawfordsville [Indian] Presbytery met last week. Two of our most aged ministers have passed away, since our fall meeting. Nine years ago there were six on our roll, my seniors in the ministry, now there is but one. “Tempora mutantur, etc.')
Rockville, Ind., May 12th, 1879.
W. C. Blair. 127—In my last, I gave some reminiscences of Rev. Hugh Wilson. If it was published I have not seen it. Can any reader of the Texas Presbyterian furnish any information respecting the life, labors, and death of the Rev. Wm. C. Blair. I met him in Houston forty years ago last winter, during the first [adjourned] session of the Second Congress of the Republic. He spent two or three weeks in Houston, making acquaintances among the members and visitors. He went to Lavaca, and I think spent the remainder of his life in that region. In 1857, he was living at Green Lake. He was the fourth of the pioneer ministers of the Presbyterian Church in Texas. I never met with him after he left Houston in 1839. Dr. W. E. Schenck of Philadelphia is Secretary of the Princeton Alumni Society. He is preparing biographical sketches of all the deceased alumni of the Theological Seminary of Princeton. He wishes to learn all that can be furnished about W. C. Blair, an alumnus of the Seminary, from 1818 to 1821. Can any one give the desired information, or inform Dr. Schenck or myself of some one who can?
W. W. Hall.—W. W. Hall, M. D., a licentiate of Ebinezer Presbytery, a graduate of Centre College, of the class of 1829, was in Texas soon after the Republic was organized. He was Chaplain to the Senate of the First Congress, that met at West Columbia. He was a native of Paris, Kentucky. We called him little Hall while in college. He was educated by a rich grandmother, who died in 1837, when Hall left Texas to receive a handsome legacy, and administer on his grandmother's estate. He and his brothers launched out into vast speculations, and soon lost all. He, then, went to Europe and studied in hospitals, and returned to the United States. Spent summers in Cincinnati and winters in New Orleans practicing on throat and lung diseases. After several years, he went to Philadelphia, married a rich wife, settled in New York, established Hall's Journal of Health, made it a success, and died suddenly in the street, two or three years ago.
Saloon Marriage, etc. 128—Temperance has had a long fight in Texas. I think it doubtful whether “The Moffett Bell Punch” will be of any service to the cause. A saloon was the first institution in Galveston. It was there as early as 1838. In Houston, it was cotemporary with the Old Capitol. Tom Hoffman was running the Octagon as early as March, 1838. The concern was an octagon boarded up about ten feet, and from the top of this structure a tent was strung up for a roof. It stood upon the principal street (Congress) about a square from the Capitol, very convenient for those who sought their refreshments at its bar. “Refreshments” was General Houston's word in those days. More than one decanter was smashed by a pistol ball in the same place. In 1840, Tom Hoffman married a handsome play actress, whose husband had committed suicide. He was a drunkard. Tom had me to perform the marriage ceremony. His bride, an English woman, desired the Episcopal service, at least the ring part of it. I complied, but got no marriage fee. His wife staid with him about six weeks, made him give her a thousand dollars that she might go to England for her young son. She returned to the States, but not to Texas nor to Tom. Married a man in Georgia, who sued for a divorce when he learned that she still had a husband in Texas.
One of the wickedest men I saw in Texas, he was a drunkard, too, told me he had been ten years a preacher of the gospel. A Senator of the Second Congress was expelled for drunkenness, and was forthwith re-elected and came back to his seat again.
I learned by a postal, from the first Elder of the Houston Church, that only he and one other of the original ten are left among the living. How I would like to look in upon that Sunday School which I helped to start with twenty-six pupils, just forty-one years this month, that has lived so long, and into the old church building, that I begged so hard for in Kentucky, and dedicated in 1842, thirty-seven years ago. I would like to see the difference between then and now, in the Island City, and in the Old Capital of the Lone Star Republic.
Rockville, Ind., June 10th, '79.
Littleton Fowler, Alexander, Ruter. 129—I would like to say a few words concerning two pioneer ministers, brethren beloved of the M. E. Church. Littleton Fowler, of the Red Lands, had preceded me to Texas. He was Chaplain to the House of Representatives of the First [Second] Congress. He came to Houston to attend the adjourned session of that Congress, which met in April, 1838. I had lately before arrived and was chosen Chaplain of the Senate in place of W. W. Hall, who had gone back to Kentucky. Fowler was sick most of the session, so I had to perform the office of Chaplain most of the time for both Houses. He was a good preacher and an excellent man. I met him at a campmeeting in Washington County. He was reported dead, in 1839, and had the comfort of reading a eulogy in which it was said “a great man had fallen in Israel.” His memory was fragrant for years with the Texas Methodists.
[Robert] Alexander came from Mississippi, in 1838, a fine preacher and good man, who made friends wherever he went. I attended a campmeeting with his Church, near Rutersville, in Oct., 1839, where the brethren had a good time. Rutersville was then the seat of a college, established the year before by Dr. [Martin] Ruter, who had been President of Augusta College, Kentucky. The Dr. had gone to Texas, in the early part of 1838, to explore for a college, so early were the Texas Methodists moving in the matter of education. He selected the point afterwards called Rutersville, not far from LaGrange. He was occupied sometime in making arrangements to start the college, and started home to Kentucky, when he took seriously ill and died in April, 1838. The College had a slow growth for several years, and, in 1857, it was running as a military Institute under Prof. Allen, whom I had known as a Methodist preacher and teacher in Kentucky.
“Daddy Spraggins.” 130—My duties as Chaplain to the Senate of the First [Second] Congress of Texas had ceased upon the adjournment of that body, May, 1838.
I, then, set off to explore: First, to Galveston, where I had landed some two months previously. Finding the little steamer Correo bound for the mouth of the Brazos, I took free passage (as I did on all steamers during my four years sojourn in the Republic). I spent a Sabbath at Velasco, preaching once in the school house, the only place for public meetings in the village. I have occasionally made mention of my being the only minister of the gospel within a hundred miles of the coast from June to November of 1838. Sometimes I made one exception, viz., that of an old “Hard-Shell,” then generally known as “Daddy Spraggins.” He was from Old Virginia, by way of Mississippi, a cordial hater of all missionaries and benevolent societies. He was living with a son-in-law, who kept a hotel, at which I stayed two or three days. When the old man found that I was not sent to Texas by a missionary society, he could tolerate me and hear me preach on the Sabbath. He was an old man of immense egotism. He entertained me by the hour, telling me of dreams and remarkable impulses in his experience and how he had in Mississippi put to rout the Education and Temperance Societies, etc., which had got into some of the Baptist Churches, by a single discourse from the passage where Elisha has sent the young prophets to gather vegetables for their dinner, and some gathered “wild gourds” which poisoned the mess. The wild gourds were the benevolent societies, which were poisoning the Church. That sermon, he said, did the business as far as the Baptist Church in Mississippi was concerned. It was said, that the wild young men would occasionally get him to preach,—that, before preaching, they would take him to a saloon and treat him liberally, after which he would become very lively, that the boys would clap hands and applaud vigorously, greatly to the delight of the old man. He was the only hard-shell preacher I met with in Texas. I heard of Parker, the Two Seed Baptist, but never met with him.
Rockville, Ind., July 14th, 1879.
Early Days in Houston. 131—The editorial from the Bayou City has greatly interested me. Compared with what it was in 1838, what a change! In going up the Bayou from Harrisburg, the limbs of the trees on the banks frequently raked the bow and stern of the steamers, as they rounded the bends of the stream. To turn the vessel, the bow had to be pushed up into the mouth of one bayou and the stern forced up round the point into the other. One steamer came up in January, 1841, which was too long to be turned, but had to back down to Harrisburg before it could be turned at all.
Then, there was no market house, but what market the city had was held in an open space. Then, the only halls for public meetings were the halls of the old Capitol. There was no organized Church until the spring of 1839. We started the first Presbyterian Church with ten members—James Burke, Ruling Elder. There was no church building, until 1840 [when] the first house of worship was commenced, which was finished and dedicated in 1842. In 1841, I spent several months in Kentucky, fighting the chills, getting married, and collecting money, six or seven hundred dollars towards paying the debt of the church. Then, there was no railroad nor any public conveyance, except steamboats, in the Republic. Then, there was no Sabbath School, nor Temperance Society. In 1840, we had a lively railroad meeting in the old Senate Chamber, at which General Baker made a vigorous speech and which the masons attended. After the speech, a large procession was formed, the Masons heading it. A little way Southwest of the Capitol, General Baker dug a hole with a spade. I acted as Chaplain on the occasion. A board was planted with due Masonic ceremonies, and the crowd dispersed. The railroad was to go to Richmond. Seventeen years afterwards, I rode six miles on that railroad (all of it that had then been made) to a Sunday School picnic. Houston had a theatre before she had a church. Then, in 1838, there was one small brick building, which the Allens used as an office. Then, it was a long walk from the Capitol to Woodruff's, near the old graveyard, where several of us boarded, during the adjourned session of the First [Second] Congress, viz.: General Burleson, Anson Jones, Wharton, and one or two other members of Congress, and W. Fairfax Gray, Clerk of the Senate. Then General Houston occupied the Presidential mansion, a small cottage of three or four rooms not far from the Capitol.
In 1840, a large banquet was given General [James] Hamilton of South Carolina in the old Senate Chamber, when, for the first time, I tasted turtle soup: I never wanted to taste it again. Then, the Houston water works was a cart with a large vessel, which brought water from the Bayou and sold it by the bucket full. Occasionally, there was a large vessel under the eves of the house; there was a large one at the Capitol, where we were glad to get a drink of rainwater until the wiggletails would get too thick; we liked rain water better than that from the Bayou. Many of the houses were made by setting poles in the ground four feet apart and boarding them up with split pine boards.
[In a letter to his wife, February 17th, 1842, Mr. Allen thus describes the dedication of the first church building in Houston]: “The last Sabbath I preached a dedication sermon in the new church at Houston. The congregation was large and well dressed and very respectful. The music was very fine. The choir consisted of some twenty-five or thirty persons, two bass viols, a violin, a flute, and claironet, all well played, and some of the voices very fine. The whole services appeared to afford great satisfaction to all present.”
Rockville, Ind., Aug. 4, '79.
First Communion Sermon Preached in Houston. 132—Dear Bro. Bunting: In reply to your postal, I have made careful search for the sermon preached at the organization of Brazos Presbytery but I cannot find it. Many years ago, I sent the original Minutes of Brazos Presbytery to the “Presbyterian Historical Society” for the library at Philadelphia, and I have an impression that I sent that sermon with the Minutes to the Library. I send the sermon preached at the first communion I ever administered. The Church in Houston had just been organized with ten members, James Burke, Ruling Elder. I suppose the first communion by Protestants in the Republic was administered by Rev. Hugh Wilson, in the Church he organized near San. Augustine, and that the one in Houston was the second. You will see it was forty years ago, last April, and I am still able to preach two or three times on the Sabbath as I have opportunity, though I have no regular work. I send the sermon 133 just as it was written forty years ago. You can use it or not at your pleasure. 134
Rockville, Ind., Aug. 18th, 1879.
Lamar and Houston. 135—In the prospectus for the new history of Texas, I notice several pictures of notable men and buildings. Those of Generals Houston and Lamar, so near together, remind me of an incident in their official lives when they were personally close together—the former going out of office and the latter just coming into the same. A great crowd had assembled to witness the inauguration of Lamar as the second President of the Republic. It was expected by his friends that his inaugural would be a politico-oratorical production, as he had the reputation of being a fine writer and poet. General Houston had no liking for Lamar, who had defeated him for the Presidency. 136 The time for the ceremony had arrived. Houston, knowing something of Lamar's nervousness, took occasion to make an exaugural, reviewing at great length his administration, and, by the time he was done, Lamar had become so nervous that he could not read his inaugural, and had to commit it to his private secretary, Algernon Thompson, to be read to an exhausted audience.
The capitol in which the first Congress of Texas met was not the large fine building in Houston, according to the prospectus, but was a much less pretentious structure in West Columbia. I preached in it several times, organized the Columbia Church in it, administered the ordinance of baptism and the Lord's Supper, ordained an elder and married a couple in the first Capitol, in 1840. Soon after the first meeting of the First Congress, the Houston Company located Houston, built the second Capitol, gave it to the Government, which removed to Houston, in 1837.
We had one grand good meeting in the old Capitol when eight other persons were received on profession, when a grandmother and mother and child were all baptised at the same time, a bright spot in the history of my ministry.
Thornwell and Smyth.—Though not a Texas reminiscence, I wish to speak of two men not much my seniors, who became noted in the Church, viz: Thornwell and Smith. The latter, I met in Charleston, in Nov., 1836, in company with several members of the then Charleston Union Presbytery. These were, Dr. W. A. McDowell, Benjamin Gildersleeve, Thos. Smyth, Gilchrist, and perhaps some others, bound for the meeting of their Presbytery at Beach Island church. Six or eight miles below Augusta, on the South Carolina side of the Savannah river, we went on the old South Carolina Railroad, which was then nearly worn out, the longest road in the United States when built. It took us nearly a day and a half to go to Augusta, one hundred and thirty-six miles. After a pleasant meeting of Presbytery, we were joined by Professor Howe and Leland and others, to the number of nine, all ministers but one, filling a stage, from Augusta to Millidgeville, to attend the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia. Thornwell and Smyth were just beginning to attract the attention of their brethren, as young men bound to rise in the Church. Nor did they deceive the expectation. Smyth had married the daughter of a merchant prince of Charleston, was settled in the principal Church in the City, gathered one of the best private libraries anywhere to be met with, and turned his attention to authorship. He wrote largely against Prelacy and in favor of Presbytery. He was a most entertaining companion in travel. Paralysis laid him aside for several years before his death. Thornwell had a steady growth in power and popularity, especially with the pro-slavery interests of the South. In Milledgeville, in 1836, he was beginning to show signs of coming power over men. In 1845, I saw him in the Assembly in Cincinnati, where he was conspicuous in the Catholic Baptism controversy. Sabbath, after the Assembly adjourned, I saw him baptise the wife of a pastor, near Lexington, Ky., who had been baptised in her infancy by a Romish priest. I next saw him in the Assembly of 1859, in Indianapolis, and, the next year, in Rochester, N. Y. Of lank and sallow appearance, with long black hair, there was not much attraction on first sight, but among men he was primus inter pares.
Rockville, Ind., Oct. 11th, 1879.
Churches of Houston and Galveston. 137—I have not felt such warm October weather since I left Texas, in 1842. The mercury has reached from eighty five degrees to ninety, every day this week. It is very much such weather as Oct., 1839, when the Yellow Fever was so bad in Houston and Galveston. Sad indeed were the breaches made that season in the two nascent cities.
And the churches of the two cities are to be vacant. McNeely goes to Nashville, but where is Bunting to go? I suppose neither of you will be long without a successor. I should find it different now from what it was when the little Galveston congregation went vagabonding for a place to worship, from the old Navy Yard to the part where the lower wharf was afterwards built. In Houston, we were less locomotive, as we had the old Capitol, the one place where all sects were wont to occupy—Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic. How happy our little society felt when, in 1841, they got into their own house! For months, Chapman the Episcopal and I alternated in using the old Senate chamber for public worship. How well I remember the stimulating effect of the fixed attention of good Mrs. Gray, an Episcopal lady who was hard of hearing, who generally sat in the near front and seemed anxious to catch every word.
Mrs. Riley, another Episcopal, was a good listener.
There was another couple, Episcopals, the husband a lawyer, both well educated. The young lawyer in conversation once remarked to me sadly that his religion did not seem to aid him in his wordlly interests. He became discouraged. They went back to New England. In after years, his name was frequently mentioned among the advanced thinkers of Boston. I have often since thought of his remark, as throwing light on his after history. If his religion would not advance his wordly interests, he would let it go and take up with spiritism or blank infidelity. “Does Job serve God for naught?” With Job it was principle not lucre, with others it is otherwise.
Rockville, Ind., Dec. 4th, 1879.
Dr. John C. Breckinridge's Reminiscence of Daniel Webster. 138—In 1840, Dr. John Breckinridge visited Texas. During his visit to Houston, the Dr. and the writer were invited to dine with Col. Albert Sidney Johnston, then Secretary of War under President Lamar. The occasion was a very pleasant one. Several other gentlemen were present. The conversation was varied and cheerful. Among other topics, the Dr. gave a reminiscence of Daniel Webster. While Dr. Brenkinridge was Chaplain to Congress, he was much interested in the Sunday School cause in Washington. He had gotten up a mass Sunday School meeting, and had gotten a promise from Mr. Webster to deliver an address on Sabbath School work. A large congregation had assembled. Many had come to hear Webster. He came in rather late and took a seat in the back part of the house. He looked tired. The Dr. went to him and invited him forward. “I can't speak,” said Webster. “But you must speak,” said the Dr. “That is the language of an emperor,” said Webster. “And it is the language of a beggar,” said Breckinridge. At this, the great man relaxed and, smiling, went forward and commenced with these notable words: “All great things are simple. The Sunday School is the simplest of all great things. It simply proposes to put the Book of God, on the day of God, into the hands of the creatures of God.” And much of his speech contained many like propositions. The Dr. thought the simplicity and power of the effort was scarcely exceeded by any effort the “great expounder” had ever made. Let Sabbath School workers ponder those sentences “The Book of God, on the day of God, in the hands of the creatures of God.”
Rockville, Ind., Jan. 28th, 1880.
Rev. John McCullough. 139—The Rev. John McCullough was a Princeton student, in 1830-32, was licensed by the New Castle Presbytery, was ordained by the Presbytery of Newton, preached for short periods in each Presbytery. In Nov., 1838, I met him for the first time in New Orleans. We went together to Texas, where I had spent the previous spring and summer and was on my return from Alabama, where I had recently been ordained as evangelist for Texas. Soon after our arrival at Houston, the Second [Third Congress] Congress assembled, when we were elected chaplains, he to the Senate [Third Congress] and I to the House of Representatives. We remained in Houston during the session, preaching alternately when there were no strange ministers on hand who were anxious for a hearing. At the close of the session, in May, 1839, McCullough went to Galveston, where he remained during the remainder of 1839 and 1840. During this time, we met frequently either in Houston or Galveston, preaching for one another as occasion offered. During this time he gathered the Church at Galveston and reported it to Brazos Presbytery, at its organization. He was one of the three ministers who, with one elder, constituted the Presbytery, and was its first Moderator. This was in May, 1840, and we had another meeting in the fall of the same year, the last meeting that I attended. The latter part of 1841, he was preaching in Columbia, where he married. I never met him after Jan., 1841. I do not know how long he remained in Columbia. He went from there to San Antonio, and while there the adobe church was commenced, which it seems was never finished.
From San Antonio he returned to Galveston, where he and one or two of his sisters opened a Female Seminary. He built a large edifice for his school. The enterprise proved a financial failure. In 1857, when I was last in Galveston, the building was occupied by General Sidney Sherman, as a hotel. McCullough had retired into the interior of Eastern Texas, and, after 1860, his name was found no longer on the minutes of our General Assembly. Dr. Wm. E. Schenck, of Philadelphia, would be glad if any of McCullough's later contemporaries would furnish him with an account of his later residence and labors for the next General Catalogue of Princeton students. 140 McCullough was a sound, scholarly preacher. He had not much magnetism in his manner. He seemed sometimes, as if he was about to go off into a laugh, while he was preaching. As a companion, he was genial and pleasant. Our preaching at Galveston was a good deal peripatetic, for want of a regular place to preach in, until the first school house was erected. While at Houston, we had the halls of the Old Capitol to occupy as a regular preaching place.
Rockville, Ind., June 24th, 1880.
Joseph Brown. 141—We first met in the Princeton Theological Seminary, in June, 1835. He graduated that autumn. His brother William remained another year. Their brother Henry was in the college the same year. The Kentucky and Virginia students were apt to be drawn to each other. There were then about fourteen students from Kentucky and a number from Virginia.
Joseph Brown was a very serious young man. Not brilliant, but steady and consistent. He left the Seminary, in Oct., 1835. We met only once afterwards, in 1860, at the General Assembly, at Rochester, N. Y. There were four of the Brown brothers members of that Assembly. Of these James and Joseph have passed away.
Henry S. Foote.—Henry S. Foote, whose death was recently announced, visited Texas in 1840. He was a man of immense talking capacity. He made a very good temperance speech, in Houston, during his visit there. Temperance was a new subject in Texas then. I spent a day with him sometime afterward, at the house of General Thos. J. Green, at Velasco.
Dr. Branch T. Archer was of the company. Foote and Archer did most of the talking, while Green and I listened. Dr. Archer took brandy freely, while Foote and I played temperance. Dr. A. was the only man I ever heard undertake to justify himself by swearing in common conversation, by saying he meant to honor God by the use of such language.
Foote's history was a checkered one. Poverty beclouded his last days. Green died in battle. Of Archer's last days I know nothing. And now Foote has gone. How many of the men of Texas, of forty years ago, have left their places among the living! “What shadows!”
Rockville, Ind., Aug. 19th, 1880.
James Burke. 142—My last copy of the Texas Presbyterian, received today, announces the death of James Burke. He was one of my earliest Texas acquaintances. He had preceded me to Texas about a year, he going in 1837, I, in Mar., 1838. He was one of my particular friends, during all of my four years sojourn in the Republic. In all my pioneer labors, he stood by me with council and prayers. When, in the early part of 1839, we organized the little Presbyterian Church of ten members in Houston, he was chosen Ruling Elder and installed, and, in connection with the humble organization, he assisted me in the administration of the Lord's Supper; my first administration of that solemn ordinance. The following Oct., when I organized the Church of six or eight members in Austin, he was chosen Ruling Elder of that Church, having taken up his residence in that young city, then in the woods. His stay in Austin was not long. He returned to Houston, in 1840. I met him there on my visit in 1857, when we met for the last time; we, however, have had occasional correspondence.
During the first Session of the Second Congress, Brother Burke was Assistant Clerk of the H. R. Part of the time during that session, he edited a small daily of duodecimo size, reporting the daily doings of the Congress. It was printed at the then new office of Major Whiting. This was the first daily ever started in Texas. The paternity of the daily press in Texas is due to James Burke.
As a worker for the American Bible Society and Colporter for good books, he did much for the moral elevation of the Texas people. He had been an Elder of the Church in Mississippi, before he went to Texas. He was, by a few months, my junior in years. The notice of his death states that he was worn out, while I am still robust, preach twice on the Sabbath and walk sometimes six miles to fill an appointment. Of “two” the Master says, “one shall be taken and the other left.” I would find but few of my former hearers in Houston now.
Rockville, Ind., Oct. 14th, 1881.
The University. 143—The University! Is it coming at last? It is more than forty years since Wm. H. Wharton, a Senator of the second [?] Congress of the Republic, made mention of the subject to me; it was in Dec., 1839. Congress was then in session, and the Senator thought it was time to be taking steps to found a University. There were, then, perhaps, a hundred thousand people in Texas. Dr. Ruter had, as he thought, laid the foundation of a University for the Methodist Church, but he “died without the sight.” After nearly twenty years, I passed within sight of a Military Academy, on the ground where the University was to have been. Then, the Baptists undertook to have a University at Independence, with, I think, but a local success. About 1840, Rev. W. L. McCalla came to Galveston and set the Island City all agog on the subject of a great University; and now, after more than forty years, it seems that Galveston would be satisfied with the Medical Department of such an institution. In the mean time, the Presbyterians modestly undertook to found a Presbyterian College, and with but moderate success. The time was not yet for such enterprises, while the people of the nascent state were struggling to secure new homes, and scattered, as they were, over the broad territory. The Wharton brothers, William and John, would have, but for their early death, been foremost in the cause of education. William H. Wharton was a scholarly man, and John Wharton, on what proved to be his death bed, requested me to write a report to Congress for him as chairman of the Committee on Education. I wrote as requested, and the first report made to Congress of the Republic, I suppose, could be found in my hand-writing, except a page or two in the beginning, in the archives of the Republic.
Rockville, Ind., April 4th, 1881.
Resumé. 144—I find that on day before yesterday, April 1st, 1838, forty-three years ago, I preached my first sermon in Texas. On Wednesday, March 28th, I landed in Galveston, then a very small place, a custom house and navy yard, the largest establishments in the place. One old war vessel, The Potomac, constituted the navy of the Republic.
On Saturday, March 31st, I landed in Houston, then the Capital of the Republic. On Sabbath, April 1st, preached three times in the old (then new) Capitol to good congregations. There had been no preaching in the city for a long time. There was then no Church organization of any kind, no house of worship. The Capitol and the Court House were the only places used for preaching: Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, or Roman Catholics had to use the same halls. There was already a theatre, which was generally well patronized, and saloons still more patronized.
Just a year after my first preaching in Houston, organized the Presbyterian Church, the first Church in the city, ten members, James Burke, chosen Ruling Elder.
During the winter and spring of 1839, many ministers of different denominations appeared in Houston, as Dr. John Breckinridge, Prof. Yates, of Schenectady, N. Y., Rev. Stevens, of Boston, Hoes, agent of the American Bible Society, Timon, a Roman priest, Chapman, Protestant Episcopal. The first Methodist Church was organized soon after the Presbyterian by a Bro. Hoard, as also the Protestant Episcopal, all within a month or six weeks. The first Temperance Society and the Bible Society were organized in March, 1839. Sam Houston, Dr. Breckenridge, and Henry A. Foote all made temperance addresses about that time. From my note book, I find that I delivered the first temperance discourse ever heard in Houston. It was on the 20th of Jan., Sabbath evening, 1839.
Rockville, Ind., June 15th, 1881.
Ministers Coming and Going. 145—My Note Book shows that, during the winter, 1838-39, there was much coming and going of ministers of the several denominations in Texas. Dr. Ruter was a pioneer Methodist minister. He had fixed the location for his college, and started home to Kentucky and died on the road, before he got out of Texas. In April, of 1838, just after my arrival in the Republic, Littleton Fowler was Chaplain of the House of Representatives of the first Congress. He was a pioneer in the Red Lands. There were two or three visiting ministers during the adjourned sessions of the first Congress. Hugh Wilson was already in Washington County, pioneering for the Presbyterians. After Congress adjourned in May, I was the only minister of any denomination within a hundred miles of the Gulf, until the following November, when the meeting of the second Congress brought quite a number of ministerial visitors; some of whom remained, as W. C. Blair, who spent many years in the region of Lavaca, and McCullough who remained permanently, while Chase of Mississippi and Lawrence and Dr. John Breckinridge, then of New Orleans, and Yates of Schenectady, New York, Presbyterians only made visits; and Horad and Stevens and Fontain and Hoes, Methodists; and Chapman, Protestant Episcopal; and Timon Roman Catholic, were visitors at the Capital. While Breckenridge was in Houston, General Sam. Houston proposed to me to get up a temperance meeting, and that he (Houston) would make a speech. I suppose the General wanted to please Dr. Breckenridge, who brought a letter of introduction from Henry Clay. Houston was anything but a practical temperance man at that time, but we had a rousing temperance meeting. The General got off a good speech and Breckinridge gave one the next evening, and so the cause bloomed into vigorous life.
124. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 9. April 18, 1879.
125. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 11. May 2, 1879.
126. Long Point.
127. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 15. May 30, 1879.
128. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 17. June 13, 1879.
129. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 19. June 27, 1879.
130. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 22. July 18, 1879.
131. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 23. July 25, 1879.
132. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 27. Aug. 22, 1879.
133. The sermon is here omitted.
134. The manuscript has this note on the first page: “Delivered April 14th, 1839, and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper administered for the first time in the City of Houston, at 4 p. m., members of other Churches participants.
W. Y. Allen.”
135. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 28. Aug. 29, 1879.
136. Correction.—In a recent article I committed an error, which I wish to correct, as my attention has been called to it by a gentleman of Lockhart. In my notice of Generals Houston and Lamar, I ought to have remembered that Houston could not have been a candidate at that time. The Constitution prohibiting any one from serving, as President, more than one term at a time. The unfortunate Col. Grayson was Lamar's opponent in 1838.
137. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 36. Oct. 24, 1879.
138. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 44. Dec. 19, 1879.
139. Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 52. Feb. 13, 1880.
140. Mr. McCullough's school in Galveston was broken up by the death, by yellow fever, in 1853, of his two sisters, who were assisting him in carrying it on. He remained in Galveston for some time afterwards and then removed not to Eastern Texas, but to Burnet county, where he lived until 1868. There was no church there and he was not regularly engaged in ministerial work, but continued to preach as opportunity offered. He was present at the Synod at Columbus, in 1868, and shortly afterwards removed to Prairie Lea to take charge of a Church, and died a few days after reaching there with his family. Mr. McCullough married a second time, in 1851, and left quite a large family who now reside in Galveston.—Rev. Levi Tenny.
141. Texas Presbyterian, V, No. 21. July 9, 1880.
142. Texas Presbyterian, V, No. 29. Sept. 3, 1880.
143. Texas Presbyterian, VI, No. 36. Oct. 28, 1881.
144. Texas Presbyterian, VI, No. 14. May 20, 1881.
145. Texas Presbyterian, VI, No. 20, July 1, 1881.
How to cite:
"ALLEN'S REMINISCENCES OF TEXAS, 1838-1842 ", Volume 018, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 287 - 304. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v018/n3/article_3.html
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