Past Pastors of Bethel

Bethel has been served by many pastors over its one hundred eighty year history. Some have had long pastorates, many served briefly. Most served as what our denomination calls “Stated Supply”: a pastor who serves on a contractual, renewable basis, typically year to year. This is a common arrangement for a small church with limited or unpredictable resources.

William Y. Allen (organizing pastor, 1840)

William Youel Allen was born in Kentucky in 1805. Studying law, he sensed a call to ministry. An 1831 graduate of Centre College (Danville, Ky.), Allen taught there while studying theology. He graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1836. For a time, Allen worked with a colonization society in Pennsylvania. (Such organizations aimed to resettle African-Americans voluntarily in Africa. There were those, North and South, who believed this was the best solution to the problem of slavery.) In March of 1838, Allen arrived in Texas, sent here as a missionary. He served as chaplain of the Texas House of Representatives, and organized churches in Houston (March 1839), Austin (October 1839), and Columbia (June 1840: that’s us!).

While in Houston, Allen served on the school board and (with encouragement from President Sam Houston) organized the first temperance meeting in Texas. He helped establish the Texas National Bible Society. In keeping with historical Presbyterian support for education, Allen wrote the first public education bill in Texas, laying a foundation for the Texas public school system.

Allen was sent to Texas as a church planter. He left in 1842, returning to Kentucky, where he briefly served as president of his alma mater before continuing on to long, simultaneous service to two congregations in Indiana. He died in Rockville, Indiana, in February, 1885.

John McCullough (Stated Supply, 1841-1846)

John McCullough was born on a farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1805. His grandparents were Scots-Irish immigrants. He taught for a time before starting at Princeton in 1830. By 1832, he was no longer able to afford his education, and left. He was licensed to preach in 1833, ordained in 1835.

The news from Texas drew McCullough here in 1836, where he served as chaplain of the Senate. Living in Galveston from 1838, he organized the First Presbyterian Church in January 1840. He was elected its first pastor but was not there long. The reasons are not entirely clear, although his friend and fellow pastor, William Y. Allen, may have provided a clue when he described McCullough as a “sound, scholarly preacher with not much magnetism in his manner.”

In 1841, McCullough and his family relocated to Columbia to care for his brother, who was ill. McCullough became stated supply here in October, supporting his family by teaching. He ran a school (1842-1845) in the building that had been used by the Texas House of Representatives. He planned mission work among the Mexicans in San Antonio. In 1845 the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions sent McCullough to San Antonio, where he organized First Presbyterian Church in 1846 and opened a school. Though at heart an abolitionist, McCullough came to terms with antebellum Southern culture and the slaves of his wife’s family. He preached for black congregations. After four years of difficult work and the death of his wife in San Antonio, McCullough returned to Galveston in 1849.

Presbyterians have historically been strong advocates for education. McCullough and his fellow pastors had the goal of creating a Presbyterian college in Texas. McCullough raised $500 for this effort (nearly $17,000 today), and gathered the beginnings of a library for the proposed school (the seeds of Austin College, in Sherman). McCullough opened Galveston Seminary (precursor of a modern high school) in 1849. A yellow fever epidemic in 1854 permanently closed the school.

After remarrying, McCullough went north for a few years, serving as stated supply for three churches near Zanesville, Ohio. The family returned to Texas in 1859, living on property in Burnet County. McCullough died at Prairie Lea on January 9, 1870.

J. T. Paxton (Stated Supply, 1846-1848)

(from History of the Presbyterian Church in Saline County, Missouri, by J. L. Woodbridge, 1906.)

Few ministers have as long and varied careers in their work as the Rev. J. T. Paxton; a veritable pioneer in the states of Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas. He was a scholarly man, vigorous in his activities, and forceful in his work.

Mr. Paxton was born in Rockbridge county, Va., April 21^st, 1814; was educated at Washington (now Washington and Lee) college in Virginia, and at Union Theological Seminary, Va.; was licensed to preach by Lexington (Va.) Presbytery Sept 2, 1843, afterwards went to Texas in 1846, and was ordained in April of that year, at Houston, by the Presbytery of Texas, being the first Presbyterian minister ordained in that state.  [Our church was his first call; we had 29 members around the time Paxton left.] After preaching about two years at Columbia, Texas, he came to Missouri in 1849; supplied the church at Columbia [Missouri] in 1849-51 and at Louisiana [Missouri] in 1851-52.

From 1853 to 1856 he was pastor at Farmington, Mo., and in 1856 he came to Arrow Rock, where he remained two years, when he removed to a farm seven miles west of that town and near Saline church; in these years preaching to various churches. There he remained till after the war[,] when he returned to Arrow Rock.

In 1869 he removed to his farm south of Marshall, residing there till 1878, preaching at intervals, till in that year he went to Texas where he labored as Home Missionary for about five years, with headquarters at Crockett. His life during this period was one of great activity. Returning to Missouri in 1883, he remained several years, then removed to Eldorado, Arkansas, where he labored four years.

From Arkansas he went to the state of Louisiana, locating at Rocky Mount, where, after a residence of but little more than a year, he died, in 1890, in his seventy-seventh year. His remains were intered at Rocky Mount.

Like Allen and McCullough, Paxton was a minister in the Old School (OS) of the Presbyterian Church. In the 1830s, Presbyterians split into Old School and New School over evangelistic methods and the conversion of sinners, among other things. The Old School was known for their studiousness, seriousness, scripture-mindedness, and orderliness. In 1855, Paxton wrote Satan’s Loudest Laugh, against the Stone-Campbell movement that broke away from Presbyterianism.

John M. K. Hunter (Stated Supply, 1848)

John M. K. Hunter was born around 1805 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was an 1821 graduate of Jefferson College, in Pennsylvania (now Washington & Jefferson College). He may have worked for a time as a journalist in Baltimore. Later, he attended Princeton Seminary (1844-1845); he was sent as a missionary to Texas. Returning from a trip to Houston, he took ill and died in only his fifth month serving our church.

We seem to have been without a pastor from the end of 1848 until 1851.

D. M. Scott (Stated Supply, 1851-1852)

Rev. Scott is one of a handful of our past pastors about whom exceptionally little information can be found. Denominational records show that he served the congregation at Huntsville simultaneously with ours (though at over 120 miles between the two towns, it’s hard to see how). The same denominational records thereafter give no indication of Rev. Scott’s service in any capacity in any part of the denomination.

Simultaneously serving several congregations would become a common arrangement for ministers serving our church in the decades after the Civil War. It enabled small churches with limited resources to have an ordained minister preach with some regularity, to baptize, and to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Some pastors served five or even more congregations, rotating among them: “circuit pastors,” as some referred to them. Often, the minister lived in Houston and would take the train to one church or another, Sunday by Sunday.

Malcolm C. Conoley (1852-1858)

Malcolm Campbell Conoley, Sr. (born near Lumber Bridge, in Robeson County, North Carolina in 1807) was the son of Irish immigrants who arrived around 1800. He attended Union Theological Seminary, in Virginia, between 1835 and 1838 (just before J. T. Paxton). Ordained in 1840, Conoley first served congregations in North Carolina.

In 1851, the family sailed to Galveston, continuing on to Columbia, where Rev. Conoley served both as pastor and teacher. Conoley began as stated supply, but after a couple of years his official title changed to pastor, suggesting the congregation was in a time of greater stability and growth.  (In 1852, the congregation gave $1,650 to the denomination–about $58,000 in today’s dollars!)

Additional evidence of the growth and stability of the congregation was the construction of the church’s first building, adjacent to the Columbia Cemetery, about 1855. (We had been worshiping temporarily in one place and another since 1840, but didn’t yet have our own building.)

In 1858, the Conoleys sold their land and relocated to a ranch near Brenham, where, from 1860 to 1868, he served as principal, teacher, and pastor. Around 1869, the family moved to Milam County, a few miles outside Rockdale, where he established the Conoley Community Church and School. He continued to serve as pastor in that area until his death from typhus in September, 1878. He is buried in the Conoley Cemetery in Rockdale, near the church and school he founded.

William C. Somerville (Stated Supply, 1859-1868)

William Crawford Somerville was a native of northern Ireland, born near Londonderry in 1815. When or why he came to America is not clear. In 1848, he graduated from Lafayette College (Pennsylvania, est. 1835). He graduated from Princeton Seminary in 1851 and soon after left for Texas, where he served in Galveston (’51-’52) and Huntsville (’52-’54), while also spending seven years teaching languages at Austin College. (The school granted him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1891.) A letter written in 1852 describes Somerville as “Simple, grave, sincere [. . . .] In person he is exceedingly plain, and deeply pitted with the small pox.” Shortly after beginning his ministry here, Somerville was elected as the Stated Clerk of the presbytery, a position of some honor and responsibility. Not long after Somerville came, our congregation numbered 63 members. (A number we wouldn’t see again until the 1960s!) He pastored our congregation through the torn times of the Civil War and the early years of Reconstruction. Our church was able to pay Somerville a good salary in 1861 (about $40,000, in today’s dollars), an indication of prosperity in the area. The salary that year was likely paid in Confederate dollars.

After leaving our congregation, Somerville served briefly as the minister of First Presbyterian Church in Houston (as supply, 1868-1869, then as pastor, 1869-1870). A combination of factors, including ongoing financial difficulties at the church, prompted Somerville to relocate. His wife was from Canada and, in 1870, they moved to Vermont, close to the US/Canada border. An 1874 history of Stanstead County, Quebec, speaks of Somerville as “a thoroughly educated gentleman of the Presbyterian Church.” Somerville died in Vermont in 1899.

We seem to have been without a pastor from 1869 into 1870.

John Russell Hutchison (Stated Supply, 1870)

Rev. Hutchison was born in Columbia County, Pennsylvania in 1807. His family had come to America in 1732. As a girl, his mother survived the Battle of Wyoming, during the War of Independence. Both of his parents died when he was quite young. He then lived with his uncle, who ran a school in Mifflintown (central Pennsylvania). Hutchison met General Lafayette just before beginning college. He graduated from Jefferson College in 1826. (Just a few years after John M. K. Hunter. In 1855, the college awarded Hutchison an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree.) He then attended Princeton Seminary, graduating in 1829 (just before John McCullough began). Hutchison then made his way south, serving churches and teaching at colleges in Mississippi and Louisiana over the next thirty years. He married in 1832; he and his wife had a very large family (ten children).

In 1860, Rev. Hutchison relocated to Houston, where a son was living. At first, he taught at the Houston Academy, which had 150 students at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1864, the school was converted into a military hospital, and Rev. Hutchison had to find another ministry. He served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church (1864 to 1867, just before Rev. Somerville). He planted a church on the north side of Houston in 1872 and helped organize churches at Navasota and Bryan. In the years after the Civil War, he became “deeply concerned as to my duty in reference to the spiritual desolations of the villages and churches within the bounds of Brazos Presbytery, and accessible by railroads.” Hutchison was moved to serve these small churches outside of Houston. One source describes him as “a railroad evangelist”: he would take the train from Houston, spending one Sunday with one church, the next with another.

His Reminiscences were published in Houston in 1874. He died in February, 1878 and is buried in Glenwood Cemetery, in Houston. An article at the time described him as “a fine classical scholar, and admirable instructor, genial, humorous, sympathetic and tender in his nature.”

We seem to have been without a pastor again from 1870 until 1872.

Simon Fraser (Stated Supply, 1872-1874)

Born in 1834 in Nova Scotia, Fraser graduated from Free Church College in Halifax. After some time spent in New Brunswick, he made his way south. It seems Rev. Fraser may have fought with the Georgia Infantry during the Civil War. After the war, he relocated to Texas and ministered here the remainder of his life. In 1873, with 45 members, our church was able to pay him what would now be the equivalent of $11,000 (a far cry from the $40,000 we were able to pay in 1861).

In the 1890s, Fraser was living in Noxville (now a ghost town, east of Junction). Fraser seems to have prospered: around 1906 he gave a substantial sum to the Southwestern Presbyterian Home and School for Orphans (the forerunner of Presbyterian Children’s Home and Services) for the building of a school, a laundry room, a barn, a dairy, and the president’s home. These were called the Simon Fraser Annex.

Fraser died in 1912.

Duncan McNeill Turner (Stated Supply, 1875)

Duncan McNeill Turner was born in South Carolina. He attended Union Theological Seminary, in Virginia (where he may have become acquainted with Malcom Conoley). Turner finished his studies in 1839. Prior to the Civil War, he was a member of the Presbyterian Church, Old School. He served in South Carolina and Georgia before going to Tallahassee, where he served both as pastor of First Presbyterian Church and as the first president of West Florida Seminary (a forerunner of a modern-day high school; the institution was the start of Florida State University). He went on to North Carolina before coming to Texas in 1874.

Like several of his predecessors, Rev. Turner supplemented his pastor’s income by teaching. It seems the community at that time wasn’t able to support him dependably in either capacity. At 48 members, our church was the largest it had been since before the Civil War, but financial resources continued to be seriously limited.

Prospects further south appear to have been more promising: at the beginning of 1876, Rev. Turner and his family relocated to Corpus Christi, where he pastored First Presbyterian church for four years or so. After a period spent back in South Carolina, Rev. Turner and his wife relocated to Morrilton, Arkansas, where he pastored the church there up to the time of his death in January 1897 (he would have been around 83 years old).

Once again, the record seems to indicate that we had no pastor in 1876.

William Hardin Vernor, Evangelist (Stated Supply, 1877-1880)

Dr. William Hardin Vernor was born in Tennessee in 1829. Prior to attending college, he taught school. He was an 1854 graduate of Maryville College (originally known as the Southern and Western Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian school founded in 1819). He was one of two in his graduating class. He continued at Maryville, finishing his ministerial education there in 1855.

Like many of those who pastored here before him, Vernor seems to have found his primary calling in education. He was president of the Masonic Female College (1858-59) in Lumpkin, Georgia. The 1860 census shows Vernor and his family living back in Tennessee: he pastored the church at Lewisburg until 1870, where he also served as principal of the local Masonic Female Institute. Like many other pastors across the South before and during the Civil War, Vernor spoke in defense of the institution of slavery.

In 1870, he was appointed as an Evangelist. In this capacity, Vernor was being sent out to organize churches: what today we might call a church planter.

Just before coming to Columbia, Vernor served the church in Palestine, Texas. He pastored our church for about three years. When he began here, he was simultaneously serving four congregations; by the time he left, he was serving only ours. The church had grown to 53, and we were able to pay him a salary of $300 (about $12,000 in today’s money).

In 1882, the year his wife died, Vernor received an Honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Baylor University (in Independence at the time). He was then living in Little Rock, Arkansas. He seems to have come back to Columbia for a time in the 1890s. He then returned to Little Rock, where he died of pneumonia on Christmas Eve, 1900.

William Boyd (Stated Supply, 1881-1882)

Rev. Boyd did not leave a trail easy to find or follow. Like several of those who came before him, he served several congregations at the same time. The demands of travel, preparation, and pastoring must have been very grueling. After serving our church, he was received into a neighboring presbytery, where he served a few miles from Caldwell, at the church at Yellow Prairie; the town was renamed Chriesman at about that same time. The town was never very large, with a population of 100 around 1890. In 1887, Boyd requested that his presbytery allow him “to dimit the ministry”: he left the ministry.

Records suggest that we had no pastor in 1883.

Robert Bruce Hodge (Pastor, 1884-1892)

Robert B. Hodge was born in Tennessee in 1856. He attended King College (a Presbyterian school founded in 1867), then continued his education at Southwestern Presbyterian University (Clarksville, TN). Licensed to preach in 1883, Hodge served as stated supply in Comanche prior to coming to our church. Hodge pastored our church and the congregation at Jones Creek (about 17 miles due south). Hodge began here with a much-reduced church (16 members–quite a drop off in just two years); while here, that number grew back to fifty. Finances seem to have been stable: for his several years here, we were able to pay him at least $400 each year (about $11,000, today).

By the time of Hodge’s ministry here, the residence of the majority of members of the church had shifted from Columbia to East Columbia (about 3 miles away; at one time, East Columbia was a reasonably busy port on the Brazos River). A new church was built in East Columbia in about 1882.

After his time in East Columbia, Hodge seems to have returned to Tennessee for several years, and then on to Alabama, where he died in 1926.

Robert Hamilton Byers (Stated Supply, 1893-1894)

Robert Hamilton Byers was born in Pennsylvania in 1814. He attended Lane Seminary (just outside Cincinnati). After working as a lawyer, he attended McCormick Theological Seminary, in Chicago. Soon thereafter, he relocated to Texas, where he was ordained and served churches in Jefferson, Palestine (where W. H. Vernor would later serve), and Henderson. In 1856, he organized First Presbyterian Church in Dallas before going to Houston, where he served as stated supply at First Presbyterian Church, 1857-1859. (Revs. Hutchison and Somerville would follow him in that role.)

Towards the end of the Civil War, he served as a chaplain with the army. Thereafter, he served sixteen years as an evangelist in Brazos Presbytery (the large region of the state that includes Houston). In that capacity, he helped organize churches in Giddings (1876) and Orange (1878); thereafter he worked for the church in Houston, then in Mexia (1885-1886), then back in Houston again, from where he would travel by train to the congregations he was serving in Alvin, East Columbia, and then also Velasco and Quintana, on the coast. One of Byers’ last acts of active ministry was organizing the church at Angleton, in 1896.

Byers died in 1900, in Houston, and is buried in Glenwood Cemetery.

William Stuart Red (Stated Supply, 1895-1898)

Born in Texas, in Washington County, in 1857, William Stuart Red attended Southwestern Presbyterian University, in Tennessee (where he may have encountered Robert B. Hodge), before transfering to Austin College (a Presbyterian school founded in 1849). He graduated in 1882, then began theological education at Princeton Seminary. He transferred to Columbia Seminary (in South Carolina), then came home to the Austin School of Theology (1882-1895), from which he graduated in 1886.

He stayed on at the Austin School of Theology for two more years, teaching Hebrew, during which time he was ordained. From 1888 to 1889, he pursued further theological education in Leipzig, Germany, where the most advanced scholarship and graduate education was happening. He later studied in Glasgow, Scotland (1908-1909), at Free Church College (now Trinity College) a Presbyterian institution established in 1856.

Rev. Red pastored the church in Navasota, was chaplain of Texas A&M University (1892-1894), then came to our church. While serving here and in Quintana, he was also editor (1894-1897) for The Texas Presbyterian. He served Hardy Street Presbyterian Church, in Houston. Austin College gave Red an honorary doctorate in 1907, the same year he helped organize the church at Palacios. He went on to pastor the church in Mexia from 1909-1919. After his retirement in 1919, he continued to serve, ministering at the Bee Cave church, near Austin, until 1923.

Passionate about education, especially theological education, Red was a tireless advocate for the establishment of a Presbyterian seminary in Texas, specifically in Austin, with the wealth of research resources available at the University of Texas. These efforts bore fruit in 1902, with the opening of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

In addition to education advocacy and his work as an editor, Red was a historian. He worked to establish a center for historical research, which eventually opened in Montreat, North Carolina.

Rev. Red relocated to Austin, to spend his retirement studying and writing about church history and Presbyterian history in Texas. His study of religion among the Texas colonists was published in 1924. He was at work on a history of Presbyterianism in Texas at the time of his death in 1933. This work was published posthumously in 1936.

We appear to have had no pastor in 1899.

George Wallace Story (Stated Supply, 1900-1902)

Rev. Story was from New York, where he was born in 1841 or so. At some point, he relocated to Iowa, where he served as a Methodist minister and married (1880). Shortly after, the family relocated to the area of Oakland, California. By the 1890s, the family had moved again, this time to Houston, where Rev. Story organized the Hardy Street Presbyterian Church in 1895. He was at Second Presbyterian Church in 1897. By 1899, Rev. Story was serving as the stated supply for the church in Angleton. A devastating storm tore through the area while he was there (1900). The storm also did significant damage to our church building as well as the building that had served as the first capitol of the Republic of Texas. Rev. Story was a great help to the church in Angleton, as he guided and encouraged them in their effort to rebuild their church. In 1902, they began worship in their new building. It was in this same period that Story served our congregation, the church in Bay City, and was active as well in Markham.

The travel and strain may have turned Rev. Story’s thoughts to a change of occupation, or he may have been looking for additional ways to support his wife and children. In 1903, he wrote a letter to a professional silk journal, asking to learn more about entering the silkworm business.

We don’t know if that amounted to anything, but Rev. Story did go on to serve as the District President (for Houston) of the Texas Sunday School Association (1908). By 1910, Rev. Story was serving the churches in El Campo and Eagle Lake. For a time, he and his wife were living in El Campo.

Rev. Story and his wife would occasionally vacation in Iowa, where his wife was from originally. He died unexpectedly in 1914; he and his wife are buried in Iowa.

John Adams Ramsay (Stated Supply, 1903-1913)

Rev. Ramsay’s family came from Kentucky, but had moved to Indiana, where he was born in 1846. His wife’s family came from Pennsylvania, but had relocated to Ohio, where she was born. Rev. Ramsay and his wife had a large family: nine children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. At some point between 1880 and 1883, the family relocated to Virginia. They were there until about 1890; thereafter, they briefly moved back to Indiana.

The Ramsays came to Houston some time between 1893 and 1900. Rev. Ramsay was involved both in the Hardy Street Presbyterian Church and the Lubbock Street Presbyterian Church (both long since closed). Like several of those who preceded him here, Rev. Ramsay would come to East Columbia one Sunday, and travel to other churches in the area other Sundays.

Rev. Ramsay served our church for ten years. A pastor hadn’t been with us that long since Revs. Hodge (1884-1892) and Somerville (1859-1868). The salary we were able to pay Rev. Ramsay (about $5,000 today) was quite consistent over this decade, suggesting that this was a period of stability if not prosperity for us. Over that period, our membership averaged 24.

Perhaps for reasons of health or age, Rev. Ramsay left in 1913; he died in Houston in 1914.

Charles Claudius Beam (Stated Supply, 1914-1918)

(from the Minutes of the Presbytery of North Carolina)

Charles Claudius Beam was born near Ellenboro, in Rutherford County, North Carolina, October 10, 1882. He was the son of David Cicero Beam and Susan McFarland Beam. In the home of these Godly parents he began to learn those principles of faith and truth that set his life in the way of the strength of righteousness. In the Christian fellowship of Old Brittain Church his character was still further developed after the fashion that enabled him to possess his soul in the simple dignity and quiet courtesy which distinguished him all his days.

In his early youth Mr. Beam attended Sunshine Institute at Sunshine, North Carolina. Because of his pleasing personality, his genial nature, and his manifestly sincere desire to be friendly and helpful in every situation in this school he won the popular name, “Beam of Sunshine.” He later continued his college preparatory education at Westminster Presbyterian School, Rutherfordton, N. C. He was graduated from Davidson College in 1909.

From 1910 to 1913 he was in Union Theological Seminary of Virginia. In 1913 Kings Mountain Presbytery gave him license to try his gifts as a preacher of the Gospel. In the same year he was ordained to the full ministry of the Gospel by Brazos Presbytery.

Mr. Beam’s first and only pastorate was in the Presbyterian Church at Angleton, Texas, from 1913 to 1918. [Note: Well, while in Angleton, he served our little church, too.] Here he developed a throat affection which made it impossible for him to continue in the preaching ministry.

Mr. Beam returned to North Carolina in 1919 and became executive secretary in the First Presbyterian Church of Charlotte. He continued in this work until 1923. His wisdom and efficiency did much to strengthen the work of this historic church.

After his term of service with the Charlotte First Church Mr. Beam began the work which was the outstanding achievement of his life as Superintendent of the Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the time of his death, March 10, 1950, the board of trustees and the medical staff of Presbyterian Hospital adopted resolutions in memory of Mr. Beam and in recognition of his many years of service to the hospital. These resolutions explain that on January 1, 1924, Mr. Beam shouldered the responsibility of guiding the affairs of the hospital at a time when its future was in doubt, and that he successfully carried this responsibility until June 15, 1944, when its success was assured, and that he thereafter labored until his last illness in behalf of the institution that he had loved so sincerely and had served so faithfully.

James Drummond (Stated Supply, 1919-1921)

The son of Scottish immigrants to Canada, James Drummond was born in 1856 in Ontario, probably in the vicinity of Toronto. When he married in 1891 (at the age of 34), his occupation was listed as Presbyterian minister.

His wife suffered from poor health. Hoping to find a more congenial climate, the family emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1893, and then to Texas (San Antonio) after 1900. While he was serving in San Antonio in 1909, Rev. Drummond’s wife died.

Thereafter, he served churches in different areas of Texas before coming to our church.

While he was pastor here or soon after, Rev. Drummond met Edna Black, who became his second wife. Rev. Drummond appears to have settled down in this area after serving as our pastor. He died here in 1927. He and his second wife are buried in a local cemetery.

It seems we were without a pastor during 1922.

Marsh M. Callaway (Stated Supply, 1923-1924)

Marsh Callaway was a native Texan, born in Courtney (just south of Navasota) in 1894. He worked for the YMCA in Houston prior to entering the process to become a minister. By 1922, he was serving a church in Galveston. After serving Bethel, Rev. Callaway served churches in Blytheville, Arkansas; Rusk, Texas; and churches in Mississippi, including Drew, Columbia, and Durant.

Although Rev. Callaway voiced support for segregation, his congregation in Durant forced him out in 1955, after he spoke against local efforts to drive out two men regarded as race agitators. Newspapers around the country reported the story. One study of the region and the era quotes Rev. Callaway: “because I dared stand up for what I believe, my services were boycotted and I was asked to resign.”

Rev. Callaway retired to West Columbia in 1968, and was active in our church, working with youth. We celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination in August, 1971. Rev. Callaway died in 1981.

From 1924 to 1930, there is a gap in church records. It seems that, during the next thirty-five years, or so, our church or presbytery had an understanding with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, whereby new graduates frequently would serve our church (often along with another small church in the area) for a period of one to two years.

Hayden B. Streater (1930-1931)

Hayden Bertram Streater was born in Beaumont in 1904. He attended Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, graduating in 1930. He served both our church and the church in Freeport, where he stayed on until about 1939. After that, he served for some twenty years in Marlin, TX (that church is now closed), then more briefly in Opelousas, Louisiana, and Robinson, TX (also now closed). The Facebook page for the closed church in Marlin includes several testimonies to Rev. Streater’s happy legacy.

Rev. Streater retired to Marlin, where he died in 1991.

Jesse Homer Freeland (1932-1938)

Rev. Freeland’s family had roots in Turnersville, Coryell County, where his grandfather was one of the founders of the local Presbyterian church. Rev. Freeland was born in Turnersville in 1891.

A 1915 graduate of Daniel Baker College (a Presbyterian institution in Brownwood), Rev. Freeman went on to Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, graduating in 1918. He served in Crosbyton (outside of Lubbock), then pastored a group of churches out of Ft. Smith, Arkansas; during this time his first wife died. After serving in Yorktown (SE of San Antonio), he pastored another cluster of churches based out of Port Lavaca, where he married again.

He began to serve the church in Angleton in 1932. As with Rev. Beam (1914-1918), that church and ours had worked out an arrangement whereby Rev. Freeland’s responsibilities were divided three-fourths with Angleton and one-fourth with us. The financial contribution of the Angleton church for 1932 was $1,500 (which works out to a little more than $24,000, today).

His first year here, the devastating 1932 storm tore through. Many of our original church records were lost on account of the storm, which also ruined our 1882 church building beyond repair. (We managed to salvage the pulpit.) The storm also destroyed our former 1855 building. The nearby Methodist congregation had merged earlier with their larger sister congregation in West Columbia. We purchased their vacant church building, which has been our home ever since.

A 1954 history of the Angleton church had this to say regarding Rev. Freeland: “Mr. Freeland did much to help develop and enrich the spiritual life of the church.  He endeared himself to the members of this church and outsiders in a remarkable manner, as is evidenced by the esteem and love held for him to this day.”

After six years here, Rev. Freeland moved to Houston, where he pastored both the Denver Harbor Presbyterian Church and the Ralston Memorial Presbyterian Church (he was the organizing pastor of the latter; both now closed). An article at the time quotes him thus: “a self-giving church is a living church.” After serving in Rusk, he came back to our area, to Gulf Prairie Presbyterian Church (Jones Creek). In 1959, he began serving the church in Barstow (about an hour WSW of Odessa). One of his daughters was living there. Rev. Freeland died in an auto accident in 1972.

Albert Edward Ruhmann (1939-1941)

Rev. Ruhmann was born in Waco in 1914. He was a graduate of Baylor University and Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He married the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. As his first call, he simultaneously served our church and the church in Brazoria.

Afterwards, he went to Texas City, where he helped to organize the congregation there. World War Two took him from that ministry into service as a chaplain in the navy (1943-1945). In 1946, Rev. Ruhmann helped organize the church in Lake Jackson, and was deeply involved in the construction of their church building.

He seems to have moved back to Waco for a time, but by 1955 he had returned as the Stated Supply for Gulf Prairie Presbyterian Church (in Jones Creek).

By the 1960s, Rev. Ruhmann was serving as the stated clerk of the presbytery (the regional body to which local congregations belong; the stated clerk is the elected executive of a presbytery).

At the time of his death in 1974, Rev. Ruhmann was living in retirement in Normangee, about 30 miles NNE of Bryan.

Arthur Monroe Moore (1941-1943)

Rev. Moore was born in Jones County, Mississippi in 1888. His father died when he was quite young. In his early teenage years, he was working in a sawmill when an opportunity came to improve his situation. The new position required him to be able to write, so he promptly went about learning.

Not long after, he enrolled in French Camp Military Academy (now University of Mississippi-Hattiesburg); he married prior to high school graduation, then taught school before enrolling in Columbia Theological Seminary (in South Carolina, at the time).

As these brief glimpses of our past pastors have shown, pastors of rural churches often served several simultaneously. In the 1930s, Moore served a group of churches in northwest Florida, based out of DeFuniak Springs. He may have decided to spend time pastoring in Texas after a 1937 visit to his son, who was the pastor of the church in Falfurrias. It seems that, while serving here, he and his wife lived in Alvin, about 35 miles northeast of us. In addition to our church, Rev. Moore served the church in Clifton (outside Waco).

By the end of the 1940s, Rev. Moore had returned closer to his home, serving a group of churches along the Mississippi/Alabama state line. One of his last acts of active ministry was officiating at the wedding of his grand-daughter.

After retirement, Rev. Moore remained in Mississippi, where he died in 1982.

Charles B. Yeargan (1943-1947)

Rev. Charles Bunyan Yeargan was born in Franklin, North Carolina in 1912, the son of a Presbyterian minister. The family moved around, living in Kentucky in 1920 and in Throckmorton, Texas (about 68 miles NE of Abilene) in 1930.

Rev. Yeargan was ordained in 1939. In 1942, he was serving in Jefferson (NE of Longview). In January 1946, the Robstown paper reported that he was “manager of the Southwestern Home and School at Itasca”; his brother was pastor at Robstown at the time. It seems Rev. Yeargan found a way simultaneously to serve both our church and the institution in Itasca.

After a brief time in Meadville, Mississippi, Rev. Yeargan and his family returned to Texas, to pastor the church at Happy (south of Amarillo). In 1954, the family relocated again, this time back to North Carolina, where Rev. Yeargan served different churches up until his retirement in the 1970s.

Rev. Yeargan died in North Carolina in 1992.

Perry P. Dawson (1947-1954)

Rev. Dawson was a native of Van Zandt County (Dallas area), where he was born at the end of 1898.

He attended Trinity University in Waxahachie, served In the U.S. Navy during World War I, and afterwards graduated from Bryson College in Tennessee. He went on to the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville.

He served in Tennessee and then in Livingston (1928-1940), Beeville (1942-46), and Angleton (1946-50). As had been the case with Rev. Freeland, Rev. Dawson split his time between the Angleton church and ours.

After leaving this area, he served in Pleasanton (S of San Antonio, ’60-’62) and then Trinity (near Lake Livingston) before retirement in 1965. He and his wife moved back to the Angleton area. Sadly, his retirement was brief, he died in February, 1968.

Milton C. Bierschwale (1954-1959)

Born on a ranch near Junction in 1924, Rev. Bierschwale briefly attended college before enlisting in the Army Air Force during World War Two. He served in the 94th Bombardment Group, which flew B-17s from England.

After the war, he enrolled in Texas A&M University, from which he graduated in 1949 with a degree in chemical engineering. Around that same time, he must have begun to feel strongly a call to ministry. He graduated from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 1954; our church was his first call: he served the congregation in Old Ocean (west of West Columbia) at the same time.

During this time, classroom and fellowship wings were added to our sanctuary building.

Rev. Bierschwale then moved on to serve churches in Nocona (Wichita Falls area), Caldwell and Somerville (SW of College Station), Premont (SW of Corpus Christi), Fredericksburg and Harper, and Yorktown, as well as Woodsboro Faith United Church.

He and his wife retired to Fredericksburg. He died in 2016.

Donald R. Beeth (1959-1960)

Donald Beeth was born in Houston in 1934. He graduated from Austin College. A gifted, ambitious student, he seems to have attended seminary while also pursuing graduate work in physics at UT. At the University of Texas, he was a member of the Westminster Student Fellowship, a Presbyterian group. He graduated from seminary in 1959. Our church was his first call. He had been with us eight months when he accepted a call to First Presbyterian Church in Waxahachie. Later, he ministered in the Dallas area.

During the 1960s, he had two major realizations: God’s work for him was in science, and he reconnected with his Jewish heritage. He began work in the Department of Physics at the University of Houston. By the 1970s, he was working for NASA. In the 1980s, he worked for Houston Lighting & Power as Head of Nuclear Information.

Lawrence (Larry) E. Gilbert (1960-1964)

Rev. Gilbert was born in 1915 in St. Cloud, Florida. His father died in the 1918 flu epidemic, and Larry and his brother ended up in a Masonic children’s home for ten years, at which time his mother took them out of the institution, leaving them in San Antonio on her way to California. Committed to providing for his younger brother, Larry had to leave high school without graduating.

After some time working in Dallas, Rev. Gilbert was provisionally admitted to Austin College: he already felt a call to ministry. There, he met his future wife, who came from South Texas.

After graduating in 1941, Gilbert attended Louisville Seminary; thereafter he served as a chaplain in the navy (during both World War Two and again during the Korean War). For a time, he was stationed on Midway Island.

through all these experiences, Rev. Gilbert became deeply moved by the unequal treatment of people that he witnessed.

One source describes Rev. Gilbert as “an itinerant Presbyterian minister.” He began serving in Port Lavaca, went on to Midland, then came to Gulf Prairie Presbyterian Church (in Jones Creek) in 1952, while also serving as a prison chaplain. In 1958, he earned an MA degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Houston.

He left prison chaplaincy in 1960 and began serving our church in addition to Gulf Prairie. After a time of service in Laredo, Rev. Gilbert relocated to San Antonio, where he returned to chaplaincy. Though he retired in 1988, he continued his service at a nondenominational church/wedding venue in San Antonio.

Rev. Gilbert died in Austin in 2008.

Leonard R. Swinney (1965-1977)

Born in Baton Rouge (1912), Rev. Swinney graduated from Tulane University (1935) with a degree in engineering. After several years working with his father’s dirt work contracting business, he answered the call to ministry, attending Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1948.

He served churches in Homer, Louisiana and Port Lavaca, Texas, before coming to our church. For much of his ministry here, he also served an even smaller church in Sweeny (about ten miles south of us).

In 1968, construction began on a new subdivision in the area, Columbia Lakes. Over the next ten years, people moved into the area and our congregation began to grow. Our average attendance over these years was over 60: double the membership fifty years earlier.

At nearly twelve years with us, Rev. Swinney was, up to that time, our longest-serving pastor. After his retirement in 1977, he and his wife lived in Opelousas, La., and then Houston, where he died in 1991.

Bruce H. Williams (Interim Pastor, 1977-1979, 1990-1991)

Rev. Williams was born in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania in 1920. To earn money toward his college education, he worked summers as an apprentice seaman. Feeling adventurous on land as well as at sea, in 1938 he made the drive to the College of the Ozarks, in Arkansas.

Not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he went to enlist in the navy. The navy wanted him to graduate and serve as an officer. Upon graduation in 1943, he began active duty, seeing action in the Pacific.

Having had for several years a sense of call to ordained ministry, he left the navy and attended Princeton, graduating in 1949. His first call was to one of the oldest Presbyterian churches in the United States, a congregation in Maryland established in the 1680s.

Returning to the navy, he served as a chaplain until his retirement in 1975.

By that time, his home was here in West Columbia. He and his wife began attending Bethel. He served for a time as a prison chaplain. When Rev. Swinney retired, Rev. Williams was asked to serve as our interim pastor–a temporary position specifically meant to guide the church through the transition from one long-term pastor to the next installed pastor. (Installed is a word Presbyterians use to describe what is, hopefully, a long-term service to a congregation.) Rev. Williams filled this same interim role for us again from 1990 into 1991.

He died in 2021, at the age of 101.

Geary N. Scott (1979-1983)

Geary Scott is a native of Kentucky, born there in 1954. After graduating from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, he came to Texas, to serve our church as his first call.

After his time here, he went on the serve churches in Oklahoma and Missouri (during which time he completed a Doctor of Ministry degree), and in Illinois and Kentucky.

Forrest H. Hawkins (Interim Pastor, 1983-1984)

Rev. Hawkins was born in Kansas in 1928, though his family soon thereafter relocated to Texas. He was a graduate of Baylor University. It seems that, after graduation, he may have spent some time in Louisiana before returning to Texas prior to 1970. He is mentioned in an article from May of that year as living in Pearland and as having an appointment to the county Child Welfare Board.

While Rev. Hawkins served as an occasional guest preacher at different congregations in Brazoria County, his primary ministry was as a practicing psychotherapist. In 1982, he was on the board of the Gulf Coast Regional Mental Health/Mental Retardation Center.

He served our congregation in the transitional capacity of an interim minister from January of 1983 until we called our next pastor in April of 1984. Rev. Hawkins died in Lake Jackson, Texas, in 1990.

James O Richardson (1984-1990)

Ordained in Louisiana in 1985, Rev. Richardson served our church for nearly six years. Thereafter, he went on to serve in Pennsylvania and New York before retiring in 2012.

James W. Gentner (1991-2016)

Born in 1954, Jim Gentner graduated from Trinity University, in San Antonio, before going on to McCormick Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in Chicago. After graduation in 1983, he served churches in Texas and Oklahoma before coming to Bethel.

During Rev. Gentner’s time at Bethel, the congregation grew significantly. We undertook some large-scale mission projects, including adapting and equipping a cargo container as a mobile maternity unit, sent to Guatemala, and work on personal mobility vehicles for people in Mexico.

During these years, the denomination experienced some of its largest, and most difficult changes in half a century; through the tumult, Rev. Gentner was a consistent witness to the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ.

After retirement, Rev. Gentner and his wife relocated to San Antonio.