Great Meetings
In 1860 the East Texas Conference met in Jefferson on October 24-30. A half dozen young preachers were admitted on trial at this session who were to go out and make history in the state and church. Among these was one, John H. McLean, who served in Jefferson for two years, (being sent to Jefferson in 1863) and who in 1874 and 1875 served as Presiding Elder of the Marshall District, of which Jefferson was a station. He became an influential figure in Texas Methodism and education.
There was excitement in Jefferson and Texas in those October days over the national presidential election. Portents of civil conflicts were plentiful, and when news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President reached Jefferson during the conference session, many declared that it meant WAR!
When the next session of an Annual Conference met in Jefferson ten years later (1870) Jefferson was in the North Texas Conference, the Civil War having come and gone. But its effects very present. Some of the honored names of 1860 were missing. Among these was the name of Rev. W. B. Hill who was pastor in Jefferson during 1860. He was killed at Fort Donelson in 1862.
Gifts to the Church Now Recalled
Property
The first title to property on which to build a church was granted in 1848. The first church evidently stood in property to which the church did not hold title. Mr. Allen Urquhart “sold” (the $100.00 of the transaction seems to have been given by Mr. Urquhart) to the Trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in the town of Jefferson the lot on which the present church stands. Construction of the brick church must have started shortly, for many older residents of Jefferson today state that “the Methodist Church was the first church in town.”
Mrs. Mamie Tullis Smith remembers hearing a former slave of her father tell how her father put him to work wheeling brick and mortar and how tired he became. He spoke, however, of what a great honor to him it was to work on the Methodist Church.
The lots on which the parsonage was later built were acquired in 1866. One lot was purchased fer $100.00 from a Mr. and Mrs. Rooks. The second was “purchased” from Mr. F. A. Schluter for $500.00, the money being given by Mr. Schluter himself. It was this honored resident and pioneer Methodist who served as one of the trustees in 1848 when the church lot was acquired and who gave the whole $1500.00 in Mexican silver dollars to go into the bell. Mr. J. C. Murphy, a wholesaler with a great business, likewise served on this Board of Trustees, and it was he who carried the dollars on a steamer to New Orleans for shipment to New York.