JEREMIAH ABRAHAM MICKEL BIOGRAPHY, WARREN, NEW JERSEY    (part 3)

Copyright (c) 2001 by Stewart J. A. Woolever, Jr. (sjaw@citlink.net).

************************************************************************
USGENWEB NOTICE:  These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in
any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or
persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material,
must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal
representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb
archivist with proof of this consent.  The submittor has given 
permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently
for free access.
************************************************************************
JEREMIAH ABRAHAM MICKEL BIOGRAPHY, WARREN, NEW JERSEY

After my notices were up for auction a man living in the neighborhood across the river came to
me and wanted to give me $50.00 for a cow that I had paid $20.00 for and which, if I would sell
to him he would pay the cash.  I said, "No, sir.  I can't do it.  If you want that cow the only
way you can get her is to buy her when she is put up for sale because I have the number of my
cows in the notice and advertising them for sale and," I said, "there is to be no by bidding at
my auction."  "Well, he said, "I will have her anyway."  So I went to Eureka and found out just
how I could handle notes of sale and get the money on them.  So when the time for the auction
came round I knew just what I could do.  The auction was fine.  We made preparations for it.
My wife baked up two big washtubs full of fried cakes.  We had pies, cold boiled ham, lots of
bread and we didn't make any dinner at all but everyone helped himself to what they wanted.
The day went off fine.  It was a pleasant day and the auctioneer was a live man.  Everything
brought a good price and the man that wanted the $50.00 cow got her.  He bid her off and kept
bidding up and finally the last bid was $5.00 above what had been bid and that was $50.00 and
it was marked off to him.  We sold everything off clean and at that time while the auction was
going on I had made up my mind to leave the state.

In the summer of 1879 I made a trip across the country on horseback to Independence on the
southwestern boundary of the state.  I went to visit my oldest friend and brother in the
church, M. J. Salter, known as Lieutenant Governor Salter.  I went across the country and
stopped over night.  It was nearly eighty miles from where I lived to Independence.  The second
day about ten o'clock or eleven I came out onto a very high bluff and as I sat there upon my
horse I was very much interested in the lay of the country before me.  About five miles away
was the beautiful valley of the Verdigris.  The country was perfectly level and I was up on
this high bluff probably 100 or 150 feet above the level of the prairie below.  I spent several
minutes taking a view of that country.  I could see to my left over as far as Chanute and
Cherryvale all a level, nice country.  I let my horse take its time in going down the steep
hills and I arrived at Independence about noon.  Mr. Salter was receiver of the land office.  I
went in.  He didn't recognize me at first but soon saw that my left arm was gone and he said
that my face came to him very quick.  We spent about an hour talking in his office, no one to
disturb.  He did not live at Independence.  His home was at Thayer about 15 miles north of
Independence.  About one o'clock he said he guessed we would go and get some dinner.  He
boarded at the hotel.  We went to dinner and it was two o'clock when we left the table and went
back to the office.  We spent that whole afternoon until about four o'clock talking over the
old times in Michigan.  He told me of his work at the state capitol and how he had to fight
against the devilish practices of the state department.  The first year at the capitol he had a
regular cleaning out of the senate chamber.  They had about twenty pages that they hadn't any
use for only to use up state money.  He set them a pattern how to economize with state funds
and that session of the legislature the senate got along nicely with six pages.  After they had
been in session about three weeks the governor had a reception and a dance and after the dance
was a great banquet.  Brother Salter told me that he had never gotten into just such a fix
before in his life and he earnestly prayed God what to do and how and when to do it.  He was
invited as manager of the great reception and dance.  The governor directed things and the
banquet to suit himself; so when the hour came for the reception the room filled up and the
elite of the capitol town, Topeka, were all on hand.  The best dancers of the city and some he
said he thought had been imported from Kansas City were ready and on the floor for the dance.
The hour came and he went into the room.  The governor's wife came up to him and wanted to
promenade while the guests were coming.  "Why," he said, "of course we can promenade."  After
they had promenaded around the hall once or twice she said, "Why, we can just as well have a
little dance."  He said, "Madam, I never dance."  "Why," she said, you don't dance?"  "No," he
said.  "Well is it possible that you are a deacon?"  "Yes, Mamm, I have the pleasure and the
honor that I am a deacon in the Baptist church and I never dance, and the church doesn't
dance."  So the time had come to call the house to order and it was his business to call the
house to order.  So he said, "Gentlemen and Ladies, as the governor had appointed me as manager
of this fine reception and entertainment, I take the privilege as all men do who are placed at
the head of anything, that we open in my own way the opening exercises.  So I do now what I
consider the best way to do and I have always made it a point in my life when I undertake
anything, I always lay the matter before God and read his word on the matter."  So he took out
his Bible from his pocket and turned to a Psalm that would be the best in the world, the 53rd
Psalm and announced that after he had read this they would engage in prayer.  He said the next
thing he knew the musicians had all left, and the dancers had played out entirely and nobody
had any desire to dance whatever.  So they visited and had a nice social time and chatted and
the young folks played games until the banquet was announced and in the banquet room he was
seated at the table right opposite the governor.  After they had eaten the waiter went round to
know what they would have in the way of drink.  Some took coffee, some took brandy, some took
wine, the governor brandy and sugar. and when the waiter came to him he said in a very low
tone, "cold water, if you please."  The waiter still stood by him and looked and thought that
he certainly had not heard right, the lieutenant governor to take water was a terrible
departure from the rules of the Legislature of Kansas, so the waiter asked him again.
"Lieutenant Governor, what did I understand you to say you would take?"  "Cold water, sir."
But the waiter still stood around, thought the lieutenant governor could not have said water,
that he must have heard wrong.  So he asked him again what he wanted.  He said, "I just spoke
out good and loud so all in the room could hear, 'Cold water, please,'" and, he said, "the
governor looked up in astonishment that the lieutenant governor of Kansas would take cold water
at the banquet."  After that he had no trouble; when he said anything they knew he was there
and there was no use trying to persuade him or change his mind at all.  That night we went over
to the Baptist church to prayer meeting and had a very pleasant meeting.  That was on Friday
that I arrived at Independence.  Saturday we spent the day, he tending to what business he had
to, then we went around the city and saw the sights and that evening we took the evening train
and went to his home at Thayer.  At Thayer it was their regular monthly meeting and we had a
beautiful service on Sunday and I had a delightful visit with his family, although his wife was
not at home.  She had gone visiting and hadn't gotten home.  But I went back on Monday morning
to Independence and stayed that day with him.  Tuesday I started home.  I went a different
route from what I had taken to get down there.  I came back by the way of Fredonia and
Cherryvale which was a little out of the straight cut.  Tuesday night I stayed at Fredonia, put
up at a small hotel, everything was clean and nice though.  The next morning I saddled my horse
and started for home.  There had been a big rain up the Verdigris while I was gone and when I
got to the Verdigris instead of its being about three rods wide, it was nearly twenty and I
knew it must be quite deep, but it was very sluggish, no current scarcely at all.  I knew the
route, I had been across there many times and I knew there was a nice coarse gravel bottom, so
I got myself prepared up on top of my saddle so that I held on good and I started in.  I knew
my horse was safe and I knew that there were no holes there, nor ruts, nor rocks.  I told her
to go on and she walked through that ford just as nicely as though she was on a soft sod
prairie.  I didn't get wet at all though it came up on the skirts of my saddle, I didn't get
one bit wet and I got home about an hour or two before sundown all safe and the folks at home
had been all right.

I went to the town about five miles out from Kansas City about a week before my auction sale,
maybe two weeks, and I had arranged down there that I should have a certain house and have it
at such a rent. While I had been away the Methodist folks who seemed to run about everything
there had gone and induced the trustee of the Baptist church to let their man have that house;
that he was moving in now and he wanted a house to live in, and the trustee gave the house up
to the Methodist preacher.  When I went back the last trip I made there, I found that the
Baptist interests were controlled almost entirely by the Methodist.  They didn't want me to
come down there and live if they could get a Baptist man to come there once a month and keep
the little flock together all right, but the Methodists wouldn't let a Baptist preacher settle
in there.  I saw how things were and said no more, didn't even ask for another house and made
up my mind, perhaps suddenly but matters were such that I had to make a decision, that I
wouldn't move down there, that the health of my family made it absolutely necessary for me to
move, why when I came back I decided then and there to go to Texas.  A few days after my
auction sale, after I had disposed of my notes and got the money on them and bought me a silver
watch for $25.00, I packed up what things we had left into some three boxes, I think one large
one that contained principally our bedding and two trunks, boxes that had our clothing in, and
on the 26th of March, 1880 Mr. James Smith drove down to my house, loaded in the boxes and
trunks and my family and carried us over to Burlington, 20 miles away.  We got there late in
the afternoon.  I took my wife and four children to Mr. Stimpson's.  I went over to the depot
to unload and ship my goods to Brownwood, Texas.  We spent that night with Mr. Stimpson and his
good wife and we had a very pleasant time.  In the morning I went to the depot and purchased
two full tickets and two half tickets which made three full tickets for Eastland, Texas.  We
got aboard the train on the 27th of March about eleven o'clock in the morning.  We ran that
afternoon down to Parsons, Kansas which is the junction of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas
railroad where we changed cars just before dark.  We rode that night through what was the
Indian Territory.  Along towards daylight we came in the vicinity of the Red River that divides
Texas from Oklahoma.  We crossed the river after daylight, after sunrise, and run into the
general station where we made a connection and changed cars onto the Texas Pacific road and
went from there to Fort Worth, Texas.  At Fort Worth we again had to change cars and about nine
o'clock in the morning; and there I learned that we would have to go ten miles further than
Eastland in order to make connection with the stage that ran across the country fifty miles to
Brownwood.  So I had to pay thirty cents more, three cents a mile, which was thirty cents.  We
got to the stage town, Cisco, just at the edge of evening.  No stage would go out until the
morning so we had to stay there all night.  The next morning I hustled around quickly and found
that the stage was full and could not take any more.  My son, Fred, managed to get around with
the driver on the driver's seat and he went through.  Then I must find some way that we could
go on that day.  I hustled around and finally found a man with a lumber wagon, two good spring
seats, and a good wagon, and a good pair of mules that would carry us over to Brownwood.  I am
not sure what it was but I think it was $10.00 so I told him to drive around and load up our
baggage he was to carry it all, and three children my wife and myself loaded in and we started
for Brownwood.  We drove on that forenoon, it was very pleasant, the sun was warm and
vegetation was just pushing out, the buds on the trees were most of them in leaf and the red
buds were very beautiful all through the woods.  We went on until noon and we stopped right in
the woods.  We gathered some brush and post oaks and prickly pears, built a fire and made
coffee, had a good lunch and started on again.  Of course we couldn't drive fast although the
road was passably good.  Around about this time in the evening, 7 o'clock, we came to a house
where a man who was running the conveyance was some little acquainted.  He said, "I am going in
here and see if I can't get you the privilege of staying all night."  He did so and the folks
concluded that they would give us lodging and our breakfast so we turned in among strangers,
and having ridden all day we were very tired, and having turned in forgot whether we were in
Kansas or Texas.  We got up in the morning feeling fine, had a good farmer's breakfast of hot
biscuits and bacon and started on again.  It was then about ten miles of road that was a
regular sand bed.  It was so sandy that the sand would roll right over the felloes of the wagon
as we drove along so that the wheels were under the sand all the time.  We drove along all
right and stopped for lunch at Rising Star.  We still had ten miles. We got into Brownwood
along about four o'clock in the afternoon the first day of April.  We found Fred all right down
at the print shop and Hart and Edward.  Edward was then married and had made care to make us
comfortable when we got through.  So we spent that week, nearly the entire week, looking around
Brownwood, hearing the shooting in the streets nights, and our goods had not yet gotten over.
They had come on the railroad.  We began to look around for a vacant house.  The houses there
looked very odd to us.  They were all up on stilts.  The hogs, all the swine in the city ran at
large and there was nobody in Brownwood, no matter what business they were in, whether it was
banking business or railroad business or what not, but what had hogs under the house.  The hogs
would go under there on a hot day to get out of the sun.

So after about a week our goods came and one mistake I made when I got to Texas, instead of
pulling off my coat and going to work for the Lord, by the urgent solicitations of my son,
Edward, I began to fish after the post  office, as it was to be changed from the fact that it
was the commencement of Garfield's administration and the democrats under Cleveland had to get
out.  My son thought that I would stand a fine chance to get the appointment so they began to
talk up the matter and I began to look for a house that I could live in.  I finally secured a
house out in the south part of town so that when my goods came I had a house ready, but our
great anxiety was to keep up, keep posted in regard to the postmaster business.  I became
acquainted with a man who lived out of town about four miles by the mane of Goff and he was a
great politician for that country.  He knew all of the ropes beside some of the chains and
while we were figuring on that, my son suggested again that I start a little counter in part of
the printing shop with some literature and cigars and such stuff as that so I would be making a
little something, but there I made a great mistake.  Southern people don't buy anything of
Northern people that just come into town and never do afterward if they can help it.  So we
worked along.  The first night that I went to church I think it was the first Sunday night
after I had gotten into Brownwood.  The Baptist church, the Methodist church, the Presbyterian
church and the one other church, four of them in all occupied the house one day and night in
the month.  It was a large schoolhouse.  It was built for both purposes, both worship and
school.  It was owned by the city, by the district as the whole town was in one district, and
all the children in the town went to school at one place.  Except, what was known as South
Brownwood had a school of its own that they called an academy.  So we went to church, I think
it was the first Sunday after we had gotten there, and I was greatly surprised to see how far
we had gotten into the frontier.  Our old usages, our old customs, were all left and we had to
make ourselves acquainted with the customs in Texas.  Had I have let the world and the things
of the world alone and have asked the good Lord to guide me and to open the way for me, I am
satisfied it would have been far better for me spiritually if not financially, but I had gotten
started for the postmastership.  I went during that spring to Austin to the State Republican
Convention with Mr. Goff.  I hope the Lord has forgiven me for that trip but I thought while in
that convention, "If hell is any worse commotion and strife and discord, I pray that God will
lead every man away from it."  I stayed through the convention.  I came home worse for wear and
nothing made in the way of progress towards the post office.  But time worked on.  The man that
had had the office, a good democrat and an ex-rebel soldier, had sent in his resignation and it
had been accepted and was at that time in the president's office.  It was under the control of
the first assistant postmaster general.  Time worked on and the first indication that I had
that my petition had been recognized in the department was a blank sent me to be filled out and
signed by three substantial citizens.  I then saw there was a pretty good chance to get the
work and finally my commission came with a demand for a bond of $12,000.00 and I in a country
where the mass of population were of the other side of the political harangue, but my son
Edward was acquainted with most everyone around there, he had been there for a good while, and
in two days my bond was made by the best financial man that there was in the town.  I sent it
in and of course I couldn't take possession of the post office until my bond was accepted and
my regular commission forwarded.  When it came then I had to arrange for buying the material
that was in the post office because the government don't furnish it in a fourth class office.
It was a work that I was not fully qualified for and it was an undertaking that I never should
have done but I worked on for about a week with the assistance of my son Edward and got things
to running in pretty good shape so that I understood the business.  I had a pretty good
headpiece, I could write a very legible hand and pretty quickly, but it was slow business for
me to handle a mail that would consist of from 300 to 500 letters and a whole sack or two sacks
of paper mail.  To handle it with on hand was a tedious job and many was the night that I would
work until 12 o'clock before I could get my work up so as to start in the morning even.  My son
would help me all that he could but he was running a big newspaper that issued somewhere in the
neighborhood of 5000 copies a month and his advertisement through the mails was very extensive
and so I labored on for the first month.  When the first month was about up the big job then
was to make my returns for the month's work to the department.  My sons, Edward and Hartwell,
both helped me so that before the first of the month I had it already to mail to Washington.

The first year in Texas was quite a change from what I had been accustomed to.  I went to the
Baptist church when its regular meeting that came once a month was held and sometimes I would
go also down to the Methodist and Presbyterian.  We went one Sunday to the Methodist church
when they had a special meeting to sprinkle babies as well as adults.  Susie went with us and I
think William and Fred were along.  After the regular service they sprinkled the candidates and
while they were going through the service (Susie was a little girl about four years or pretty
near that) she watched them.  After we got home she said, "Mother May, that man prayed with his
eyes open all the time."  "Well," her mother told her, "he read it out of a book."  "H'mm" she
said, "anybody could do that."  When the regular meeting time for the Baptist, the prayer
meeting night and the Sunday service, I tried to shape things so I could be there and take a
part in the meeting.  They had no regular pastor, in fact we were on the frontier of western
Texas and when they could get some minister or parson as they called them in that country going
through that neighborhood, they would endeavor to get him to preach for them on the Saturday
and Sunday at the time for holding service.  It was at a time when there was great excitement
in the city as was called.  The wire cutters and the cattlemen were having a terrible quarrel.
The cattlemen had fenced a great deal of land with a wire fence mesquite bean posts and had in
a good many instances fenced in or fenced out the ranch men, smaller by natural investments,
excluding them from the water, and the smaller ranch men had concluded that they would form a
society or company or clique and that they would go nights and cut the wire of the big cattle
men so as to break up the custom of fencing all the territory that they wanted.  About a month
after we settled in Brownwood the contention got very hot, so much so that the citizens, many
of them, with the sheriff, and every cattleman armed with a Winchester rifle were upon the
housetops and public buildings where the roofs were flat to watch out for the wire cutters who
were coming in to take possession of the town and for three or four days it was nothing
uncommon to hear a gun crack at any time of the day and nights' rests were very much disturbed
by the commotion in the streets.  A great many wire cutters were arrested and there were
several law suits and in those law suits were brought out the facts that these very men, some
of them, at least the Cegenses, and two or three others were known to be in sympathy and
financially aiding wire cutters way out west on the plains where they had big interests and
they didn't want the cattle fenced up at all but rather their cattle run where they would not
have to pay for new land and spend any money for fences and would only be at the expense of
hiring herders.  After that was brought out, there was a company laid in waiting for a week or
more to cut a wire of a man who had fenced a section or more to herd his cattle and I know that
financially he was a strong man and his influence among his fellow men and especially among
cattlemen was very great.  So he went and saw the captain of the Texas Rangers and planned with
him to have a squad of Texas Rangers on his ranch at a certain place on a certain night and
that he would be ready to aid the Rangers in any way, shape and manner that he could.  He also
secured the aid of a very warm friend of his to go and join the wire cutters gang.  The friend
did so and at the same time he had a signal to give to this man who owned the ranch when the
wire cutters would come and where they aimed to cut.  The Rangers came and the wire cutters
came at the time appointed and went to cutting the wire and pretty soon about a dozen of them
were arrested, taken before the court and had the time set for their examination.  Before the
time for their examination came this man learned of the evidence that the wire cutters had of
some of his very intimate friends who were hiring wire cutters to cut wires out west.  They got
their heads together and concluded that it wasn't best to prosecute.  The wire cutters were
turned loose and that was about the way the matter ended.  There was no more trouble after that
of wire cutters.

I took no part in any political matters in Texas during the first year aside from what I
mingled in it to secure the appointment of postmaster.  The second year I was a regular voter.
The first year I was not, but after I had been in the state a year and become somewhat
accustomed to the usages and customs of the people and had remembered that all of my neighbors,
all of my associates with few exceptions outside of my family, were ex-confederates, had been
members of the noted Long State corps which we always met in our battles in the army, and I
wish to state for the credit of the old confederate veterans that I was never treated better by
any class of men that were strangers to me than I was treated by those old comrades of the
confederate army while I was in Texas.  I never was insulted by any of them.  I never received
an unkind word from any of them but would sit by the hours at a time and talk over the old
battlefields where we fought against each other.  About the close of the first year, by the
solicitation of Brook Smith and several other members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows I
was induced to join the Odd Fellows.  There were a great many things in it that I did not like
as there are in all organizations, but the most disgusting thing was to see members come into
Lodge full of red liquor.  After I had joined I set about with all of my power that I possessed
to rid the Lodge of that element.  We had some men who could not be called strictly honest
because they would go out and get young cattle that didn't belong to them, that weren't branded
and brand them for their own, what is known as Mavericking cattle.  One man in the lodge in
particular by the name on John McGrew was a terrible inebriate and it was said that man had
disappeared mysteriously in the mesquite swamps in the vicinity where he lived, some five miles
down the road from Brownwood.  He claimed to be a Republican and used to come and talk over the
matter with me and yet I never trusted him out of my sight at all.  My son, Edward, was well
acquainted with him and from him I learned the man's history.  He got so bad and so much of the
time drunk on the streets and lay in the gutters on the streets, that I believe it was Brook
Smith moved that he be suspended from the order for a year.  I seconded the motion and it
brought up quite a clash in the lodge room.  All whiskey lovers, whiskey drinkers, and that
class of men who spent about all the time they were in the city in the saloons, all voted
against the measure, but we had canvassed the field and we had just five voters more than the
liquor element had and suspended the man for a year.  We didn't seem to improve at all.  Every
time he came into the city he would get full and he seldom came around to where I was at the
post office.  About a month before the end of the year, Mr. Brook Smith came to me one day and
he said, "If we don't act on that pretty soon the year will be up and if we don't take any
action he will be back in the Lodge again in good order."  "Well," I said, "we mustn't allow
that.  If you will be on hand at our next meeting, I will move that we appoint a committee of
three to investigate the matter and to talk with McGrew and see what he intends to do in the
matter."  "All right," he said, "I'll be on hand."  So at the next meeting I moved for a
committee, Smith seconded it, put it to a vote and carried.  We appointed three men as good as
there were in the Order to investigate the matter and report next meeting.  The next meeting
the committee came in and their report was very unfavorable.  Someone moved that J. C. McGrew
be excluded from the Order.  It was discussed for perhaps half an hour or more and the whole
element that trained with him were there and it came to a vote we outvoted them seven and he
stood excluded from the Order.  They carried it right up to the Grand Lodge and the Grand Lodge
heard all of the evidence, pro and con, and sustained the action of the Lodge which excluded J.
C. McGrew from an Odd Fellowship homes.  Then from his actions and from what others had told me
we knew that he had a grudge against me and Brook Smith and I watched him pretty closely and
was sure never to be in company with him alone.  It ran on for nearly a year and he was taken
with what he called a big boil right side his jugular vein in his neck.  Dr. Mays, a fine
physician and very much of a gentlemen was called to visit him.  The doctor went down to his
hut on the bayou bottoms and examined it.  He said, "Mr. McGrew, I can't lance that."  "Well,"
he said, "but it's got to be lanced."  Dr. Mays said to him, "Mr. McGrew, you won't live five
minutes if I lance that.  The case of your jugular vein is so affected that as soon as that
pressure stops from that boil, that minute the vein will burst and you will bleed to death."
The doctor said he lay on the bed with all his clothes on and his boots and he had always
bragged that he was going to die with his boots on, and he said to the doctor, "I can't live
this way and you must lance that for me," and after some five refusals he still insisted that
the doctor should lance it; he lanced it and in less than eight minutes J. C. McGrew was of the
past.  I never got word of a person's death that gave me such relief as that did from the fact
that I knew him to be a bad man and his shot was fatal to anything that he drew his Winchester
on.  That occurred in the second year of my sojourn in Texas, in Brownwood.

Another very uncommon thing occurred during the third year.  I had gone down to Ft Worth on
business to be gone a couple of days. They were all well at home when I left and I hadn't heard
anything from home, so I supposed that everybody was all right and when I came in, in the
morning I found that my only daughter was critically ill with pneumonia.  She had been taken
the second night after I had gone away at a neighbor's house, just a fence between.  The
neighbor had a small girl that had persuaded my wife to let my daughter go over there and stay
that night.  Along in the middle of the night she woke up in great pain.  The lady who lived at
the house came over and brought her home, told my wife that she was suddenly taken and seemed
to be very ill.  They sent for a physician at once.  He came and pronounced it pneumonia.  When
I got home she was unconscious.  She didn't know anyone.  I had bought her a nice piece of
cloth for a summer dress but I couldn't get her to look at it.  For nine days and nights she
lay in a condition that was liable to drop her off any hour.  There were two ladies worked at
my son, Edward's, at the "Sunny South" office who had been nurses in the city of New York in
the hospital.  They came frequently and offered their services nights while I had to be at the
post  office till midnight to get up my work.  They came one, one night and the other the next
night so they helped us out nicely and I asked the doctor the first time he came after I came
home what he thought of the case.  He was a grand old man and I believe was a good a Christian
as I ever met up with.  "Anyway," I said, "I want to know just what the condition is, what you
think of her."  He said, "I don't feel as though I could give you any encouragement whatever."
and as we watched closely we couldn't see any change from one day to another.  Across the
street lived a neighbor by the name of Joe Wakely who had two little daughters that used to
play together a great deal.  They came over frequently to inquire about her.  All the nine days
in the morning the old doctor said to me, "I think that by tomorrow morning we will have a
change one way or the other."  She had been laying then for three days when the sides of her
neck and her shoulder would be all purple from congestion and the doctor warned me that that
night we would need to be especially careful to watch closely and to use all the helps that we
could.  So I got a pint bottle of brandy and a bottle of quinine and a fresh bottle of
camphorated oil and a fresh bolt of medicated cotton, and those two girls that were working at
the office had to work that night till nine o'clock and both of them were there.  My neighbor
across the way, Mr. Wakely was found.  Along about half past ten o'clock the congestion seemed
to be getting very bad.  The nurse said we had better begin with the restoratives and we did
and all hands of us worked there chaffing under her arms inside her elbows and under the knees
and the bottom of her feet and in the hands, chaffed with that brandy and quinine until it
seemed as though we had rubbed the skin all off.  About half past two o'clock in the morning
she began to show symptoms of change and by  three o'clock  it was much more evident and at
daylight we felt as though she had conquered when the old doctor came about eight o'clock in
the morning, he sat down by the side of the couch and looked.  His hair was quite long and he
smoothed it back with both hands and looked up.  He said, "I thank God," he said, "that I can
tell you this morning that your daughter is better."  But it took the very nicest of care to
get her on her feet.  She was getting along nicely until enlargement of the liver set in and
for nearly a week she went around the room what little she could walk, bent over all on one
side; but the old doctor got that all fixed up so that she was rid of that and then night
sweats set in.  The old doctor recommended outdoor exercise.  Her brother, William, had a
tricycle and she took a notion one day she wanted to ride the tricycle around the yard, so I
made no objections.  I thought it wouldn't hurt her anyway and she kept on with that for quite
a length of time and got so she was quite an expert at it and the Wakely girls would come over
and ride with her, and by the first of September she was up pretty near so she could go to
school, but I think she had to wait two or three weeks afterward before she got all up in good
shape.

The next thing that drew my attention which interested me greatly in Brownwood was the
election.  It was coming on time for the election and I had heard it stated several times that
there had never been a Republican vote cast in Brownwood and I had said to some of my
Republican friends which were not very numerous, I think I could count them all on my fingers
and thumb by going over twice, that when it came time to vote I would have a Republican ticket
if I had to import it.  I should vote the Republican ticket.  The time of election drew near
and I was acquainted with all those ex-confederates, I said to one of them one day, "Charley,
you vote when you go up to election just as you feel you ought to."  "Why, sure," he said, "A
man would be a fool that didn't."  "Very well," I said, "I expect to have a Republican ticket
and cast my vote with that ticket."  "Well," he said, "there are so few around here that it
ain't worth while."  Election came.  I went in to vote and after I had made my ballot I stopped
up to the  receiver who had charge of the ballot box.  I said, "My name is J. Mickel.  This is
my first vote in Texas and it is a Republican vote."  Before I left Brownwood we voted in
Brownwood over fifty Republican tickets.

We had no railroad connections at Brownwood until the fourth year that I lived there and I used
to go out frequently of a Sunday morning to some rural church that I knew was holding meeting
that day and mix with the people and get acquainted with them and sometimes I would preach for
them, but most generally sat and listened to some good gospel preacher.  So that by that means
I got acquainted with all of the churches nearly in that county and some out of the county and
by meeting people at the post office it made me generally known by all the people round about.

The third year, the most interesting thing that occurred to me after the election was over, was
a Baptist preacher moving into Brownwood from Missouri.  His name was John D. Robinette.  I
first met him at my neighbor Wakely's when he lost his wife.  I was outside as there was no
room in the house, sat on a bench and Parson Robinette came and sat down a little way from me.
I rather liked the looks of the man, a perfect stranger, so after the funeral service was out I
made his acquaintance.  He told me that he had gone up there by invitation from M. to see the
Baptist church, and as his father-in-law lived there and his mother-in-law was a strong
Baptist, they thought that they could probably arrange matters so that he would preach for the
people there.  That while there was no possibility of doing much because there was no house of
worship, there was a good room over at South Brownwood that was used at some school as an
academy which he could get the use of every Sunday if he wanted it, "But," he said, "the people
here don't want to go over there every Sunday.  They are willing to go one Sunday in a month
and we are entitled to one here and that will make us two services in the month."  We talked
the matter over quite lengthy and it was soon settled that he would stay and a grand, good man
he was, a live man and a man that stayed very close to the gospel when he was preaching and in
his living was an example for anybody of a gentleman, Christian and citizen.  That winter there
was quite an interest manifested and the dancing element seemed to put extra effort forward to
keep all of their class of people away from the meetings.  Finally one night in the prayer
meeting there was quite a good deal of talk on the point of dances.  The Presbyterian minister
was there at the prayer meeting and he and Brother Robinette decided on a time where they would
hold a debate, one against dancing and the other in favor of it.  I told Parson Robinette two
weeks before the debate came off, I said, "That Presbyterian man will go back on you."  "Oh
no," he said, "he won't."  "Well," I said, "the statement he made is this; that he was not
altogether in favor of abolishing dancing from the church and when it comes to the test he will
throw cold water onto everything that you say if he possibly can and the result will be about
like it was when the boys went snipe hunting.  Three of them went, two went off to get the
snipes and one stayed to hold the sack."  And when the debate came off the Presbyterian man
said, "We never say to our members that you can't do so and so or you'll be excluded, but we
say, you had better not." and he kept up that strain and when he got through Brother Robinette
looked like about fifteen cents; couldn't do anything at all because the ground on the other
side was so expansive they wouldn't corner at all.

The work at the post office was very trying, although I got along remarkably well with it.  I
had one man as clerk for a year that I picked up out of a drunkard's ditch by the name of
Charles Allen.  Mr. Allen was a splendid young man when he let liquor alone but it seemed to
have control of him most of the time.  When I engaged him to work for me at $25.00 a month and
his board, had it not been for the character that he had as a drunkard, he could have filled
any position in the city, in the county or in the state.  He was a splendid person and his
knowledge of land was good.  He had gone to school in Kansas City where his folks lived and in
his youth had mingled with some of the very best society in the Episcopal church.  But he got
disgusted with some of the styles that he came in contact with and sought associations out at
night which was days before the Young Men's Christian Associations, and therefore he associated
with a class that drank wine and it wasn't long he told me till he wanted something stronger.
He never would take beer, he said he never drank a glass of beer in his life.  Before he went
to work for me he had no shirt except his undershirt, no coat but one, shabby and filthy.  His
hair was long and his beard was long and as black as black could be, both his hair and his
beard.  I saw him the day before I asked him to work for me sitting upon a forge in a
blacksmith shop with the rib bone of a beef that he got over at the market and he was roasting
that over the forge fire to get something to eat.  I contracted with him that he should work
for me as long as I needed help and he kept straight.  He said, "I will accept your offer and
whenever I can't control by appetite, then I want to quit."  He went to work for me I think
that was in the latter part of November and he worked up to Christmas without any new clothes,
without being shaved and without his hair cut, and while he was humiliated and felt it keenly,
yet he went right on.  I asked him on Saturday night if he wanted some money and he said no.
He said, "I am getting my board and I have no occasion to be able to use any money now."  He
worked on until Christmas morning I believe.  Christmas morning he said to me that he would
like some money and I supposed of course that he was going off to have a time, so long about
eleven o'clock he came back to the office and I didn't know him.  I had to look twice to see if
it was Charles Allen.  He had been to the barber shop, his hair cut in good style, his beard
all taken off except his mustache and that cut back, a new suit of clothes, new shoes and all
and I looked at him and simply thanked God that He had induced that young man to try to be a
man.  He stayed right on in the office, the office closed at twelve o'clock, it being Christmas
day, he stayed right there until noon and then went up to the house to dinner.  In the
afternoon instead of going down into town, he stayed around the house quite a while and I went
back to the office to do some work there and Charles came back down to the office and said,
"Let me help you do that."  I let him in and that day and night he stayed right around close
and the next morning was at the office ready to take his place.  He worked for me a little over
a year.  During that time Elder Robinette had had a series of meetings and Allen professed
conversion and he had two or three quite lengthy talks with me about the church.  He said his
folks all belonged to the Episcopal church, he had been brought up among them but he didn't
like their ways at all because it was all form and no spirit and finally he made application to
the Baptist church for baptism and church membership.  He said his folks told him he was
sprinkled in his infancy but he said I don't know anything about it except what my folks told
me and that don't do for me at all, it isn't the way the Scripture teaches it.  He stayed on a
little over a year.  I never had occasion to criticize him or find the least bit of fault with
him.  He was a perfect gentleman at the house and he knew well what belonged to a dependent.
At the end of the year he had saved up nearly all of his wages aside from his clothes and
washing.  But after stepping out of the office he had no employment and it wasn't more than six
months until he was a slave to drink again.  The last I heard of him he was up on the Texas
Pacific road and doing odd jobs to get a little money occasionally, a man well qualified for
any position if he could just let liquor alone.  He was a kind hearted man and a very sociable
man although with all of my association with him I never knew him to laugh out loud, the
nearest he would come to a laugh would be a smile.  The last I heard of him was when I lived in
Iowa he was yet in Texas.

That year we had a very interesting and profitable series of meetings led principally by the
pastor of the Baptist church, J. D. Robinette.  They increased the membership of the church
quite a good deal and Brother Robinette's father-in-law was converted during the meting, joined
the church and being a man of a good deal of wealth, they at once started planning to build a
church.  They bought a lot and in less than a year's time they had a good building, plain but
room enough to sit a good large congregation and when it was dedicated, a man by the name of
Pope who was State Convention Secretary, delivered the dedicatory sermon, but raised all the
money first, enough to cover all that was needed and to have a little over.  That was the third
Baptist meeting house that I had put money into.  I put some money in that and quite a little
work with the paint brush.  So that at the end of three years from a little handful that could
only hold service once a month, they had grown up and the Lord had prospered them in the work
until there were seventy odd members, a good house of worship and a regular pastor with service
every Sunday and Wednesday night.  I had been out through the country during the third year as
Allen could keep everything in good shape and I frequently attended fifth Sunday meetings
whereby I became much better acquainted with the members of the Baptist church through two or
three counties so that the end of the fourth year when Cleveland was elected president, the
office was turned over to the department and I began to cast about to know how I was going to
get along in Texas.  Rev. John D. Robinette came to my hand, a man full of love and fellowship
and straight in all of his deportment.  I had been casting about for about a month when Brother
Robinette drove up with a pair of ponies.  They were half A_______, called A_______ mustangs.
He offered to sell me the ponies for $50.00, a price which was very reasonable notwithstanding
that they were not looking any better than common range ponies.  I said, "What do I want with
them?"  He said, "You will have to have them because you are going to work right in this county
and you are going to have all your time too, and in order to get to the work you will have to
have a team and you can pay me as you can.  I don't want any money down.  You will necessarily
have to have a harness and buggy."  I had been doing some little painting around and a call
came in from a church at Live Oak, about eighteen miles down the bayou.  A man by the name of
Captain Wood, rancher and a deacon in the Baptist church at Live Oak had sent up word by his
son-in-law who was a member of the Baptist church at Brownwood for me to come down the next
Saturday so I went down, held service with him as Baptist churches in that state and in fact in
all the southern states hold a covenant meeting one Saturday afternoon in the month.  I went
down with Capt. Wood and stayed over Sunday, found out pretty well about the work and supposed
as most the people did that Deacon Wood was a staunch Christian man.  I bought the ponies of
Brother Robinette and I didn't have much of a place for them but it doesn't take very much to
shelter in that country to keep things fairly comfortable the most of the year.  I at once saw
what the trouble was with the ponies.  Their hair was long toward their ears and I went to work
to fix them up.  In less than a month's time I had them out in the country and driving in one
day I went past Brother Robinette's house.  He was out at the front gate and of course I had to
stop and talk with him a while.  He said, "You traded off the ponies you got from me I guess ."
I said, "No, I didn't.  These are the same ponies you drove down to my house."  He said, "It
can't be possible."  I said, " It is possible and more than that, they have learned to walk
down here since I have had them," and I went on and told him what I had done and that I had
gotten them up in pretty good shape.  They had been out on the range when he had them and may
be he would get them out and use them two or three days and then back on the range.

That year which was my fifth year in Texas, work was abundant and money was scarce.  The most
of the churches out in the county, the members were renters, that is, they rented farms and
they only got money once a year.  The people in that section of the country didn't depend on
anything only their cotton and the cotton didn't come into market until about the last of
September when they would begin to realize money from their cotton, but the owner of the land
rented the land out to these men in such shape, made their papers so that the first money from
the cotton went to the land owner and in many instances the land owner had furnished the renter
for the first part of the year, that is, furnished him with living for his family.  So there
was not much money around.  Yet always a little.  I went down to Live Oak and made a contract
with them, served them all that year.  Everything is at a standstill in Texas at Christmas
except whiskey, fire crackers and noise, but Deacon Wood with three or four of the other
prominent members in the body had planned to have a watch meeting on New Year's night and he
wanted I should help them so that they could have a good meeting, but the old man had been a
very bitter opposer of instrumental music in the church.  Several had desired that we get a
cottage organ or something of that kind that could help them in their singing, but the old man
always set his foot down on it strong.  But he came to me for this New Year's watch meeting and
wanted to know if I knew where they could get an organ to use and somebody to play it.  "Why,"
I said, "Deacon, I have got a good cottage organ and my son Fred is a pretty good player.  He
can play all the old hymns."  "Well," he said, "will you take it down to Live Oak?"  "Well," I
said, "I haven't any conveyance that I can take it."  "Well," he said, "I will come with my
team and my spring wagon and we will put it in.  I will come up in the forenoon and we will get
back in the afternoon in time to arrange for the night."  Fred was ready to go and went and we
took the organ down there and we had just a splendid meeting until after midnight.  We would
change about speaking, singing, praying and thus we passed the time very nicely.  Nobody was
hurt but a good many made the remark that Deacon Wood had got converted because he always had
opposed instrumental music.  But the work went on.

From there I went over to a little church known as Indian Creek church.  That was bout fifteen
miles almost due south of Brownwood.  Then I had the work at Live Oak which was only one
service a month and the church at Indian Creek insisted on my coming and helping them.  Their
offer was not much, only $300.00 a year, but it was only one service in the month, so I took up
the work and that gave me two services a month after that time.  Another church out in the edge
of Coleman county which was due west from Brownwood, which was quite a stirring, religious
body, wanted to take my third quarter of the time.  So that in less than a year and a half I
had four churches and the four would have made me a good, substantial living providing I could
have gotten my pay as had been promised.  But unfortunately the second year was an entire
failure of crops.  Men sowed their wheat in the fall and never saw it afterward.  Some along
the streams did sprout and that was as far as it got so that there had to be promised corn and
wheat and flour changed in all that section of the big state of Texas for a whole year.  Men
that were used to having some wheat to sell and some corn and plenty of cotton had neither.
The cotton was a failure.  It was so dry the corn never eared and the wheat didn't come up
during that year.  But we got through and while we had a pretty hard time to live, yet we never
were without something to eat and a place to sleep.  The second year at Indian Creek was a very
profitable and enjoyable year.  We held a series of meetings in the month of July fifteen miles
away from home.  The second week of the meeting my wife and daughter went down with me to stay
a few days.  I think they went down about Wednesday and remained until Saturday.  Friday night
my wife made up her mind she would have to go home the next morning.  There was an appointment
for service the next morning at ten o'clock and we were fifteen miles away from home.  We
passed the night, went home with Brother Smith who had a young son nine years old that was very
much interested in the meeting and I told the Smiths what we wanted to do in the morning, and
sunrise comes pretty early in the month of July.  But I told him I wanted to leave his house at
sunrise and Mrs. Smith said she would be up and have a good breakfast and have it early so that
we could get off by sunrise.  Just as the sun was coming up, we got into the buggy and the two
ponies started for Brownwood.  I got home in good season, stopping a half hour to let the
ponies rest, drove back the fifteen miles on a hot July day and by driving two or three miles
and then stopping under the shade of the trees and letting the ponies blow a little, I made it.
I got there fifteen minutes ahead of time.  When I drove up several of the farmers said, "Well
you ruined your ponies."  I said, "Oh, I guess not.  They stopped and blowed every two or three
miles."  I took the harness off and let them stand, gave them no water.  We had a splendid
meeting that morning, several professions and after the service was out we would have plenty of
time, it would be three o'clock before the next service.  We were out under a big arbor that
was after the service was out, I went to the horses led them down to the creek, let them drink
what they wanted, gave them a good feed of oats in the bundle.  They ate the oats, straw and
all.  Then I took my curry comb and brush and gave them a thorough cleaning up and that night
when I hitched up to drive in for the night they felt just as well as they ever did.

That meeting ran on about three weeks and the people would come with their lumber wagons with
wagon covers and their bedding and would stay for a week right there in their wagons.  During
that time this young boy of Smith's nine years old professed conversion.  He was truly a model
boy.  About a week after the meeting was out he had come up to Brownwood, drove the team and
did the errands that his father wanted done, because his father was under the weather and
unable to come.  So on going back something frightened his horses and they started to run and
though he stayed on the seat and held the lines and so guided them that he made them run up
against a big oak tree so that the tree came between the two horses and the end of the tongue
hit the tree and of course it sent him out of the wagon, but still didn't injure him in any
way.  His mother asked him (his name that he went by in the family was Patsy) "Patsy, suppose
you had struck that tree when you went out of the wagon and gotten killed."  "Well, it wouldn't
have made any difference," he said, "I would have had less of life and probably would have been
all right.  The Lord took care of me and always will."

The next monthly meeting he applied for membership, was received and with about three or four
others, I baptized him in Indian Creek pool.  I was forcibly impressed with the boy when I
baptized him, that he would have a life work that he would have to do.  His father told me the
next day he said to his father, "Father I want to trade you my steer yearlings for the same
number of yearling heifers."  "Why, he said, "Patsy, what do you want to do that for?"  "Well,"
he said, "I want to be raising some stock and increasing it so that when I go off to school, I
will have cattle of my own to turn off and get the money that will be needed for my education."
His father traded with him and the last I knew of Patsy in his preparation was that he was at
L.K. in a theological seminary, fitting himself for the mission in Brazil as a missionary of
the Southern Baptist Convention.  As I said above he was a very peculiar boy.  When his father
was gone away from home when he was only nine years old, when the hour came for family worship
at night, he would get the Bible and read and offer prayer, and he continued that as long as I
knew anything of him.

That fall I had quite a scrimmage at Indian Creek.  A Methodist presiding elder had come in
there and had undertaken to teach the doctrine to the point that sprinkling for baptism was
taught in the Scriptures.  I think he took three or four nights and two hours of a night to
show from history that the scriptures taught just such things.  I heard him the last night
because the next day was our day at Indian Creek, and he made some of the most outlandish
assertions without any proof whatever that I ever heard any intelligent man undertake.  I had
seen the trustees during the day and had gotten the use of the house the next week, nights.  I
got up and announced at the closing that I would lecture the next week commencing on Tuesday
night and consecutive nights until I had gone over the grounds and shown that the things
introduced by my opponent had no ground whatever in the Scriptures.  I went.  I took two or
three historical works with me and the first night there was a good, fair turnout.  The second
night the house was full.  The third night it was more than full and I went on step by step and
showed both from history and from the Scripture that bathing was never used in the Scripture
for baptism and that the doctrine of sprinkling didn't come from God nor the apostles but from
the Pope of Rome, the year in which it came and the Pope who introduced it.  The last night of
the debate I think the people must have come for twenty miles around to fill the house the way
they did.  It made the Methodist class very warm.  They had many of them hear it right through,
and they had petitioned the presiding elder to send off and get the bishop of the state to come
and reply to my lectures.  The bishop never came, but the church there got to be very strong.

One man in particular that came in from the eastern part of the state down near Louisiana.  He
and his family all came over into the Baptist Church because they were Baptist, they weren't
Methodist although they were in the Methodist class.  That ended my battle in that section.

The next day I came home and my daughter-in-law, my son Edward's wife, had come in from
Colorado and I told her where I had been and what I had been doing.  She was a member of the
Methodist class at Tricom.  I laid down some books where she could get them to read.  She read
them.  About two weeks later she made application to the Baptist Church of Brownwood for
baptism and membership, was received and baptized.

About that time I took up the work at a place known as Santa Anna Mountain.  It was rather two
mountains that rose right up in the level prairie and there was a space between them where the
highway ran through up to Coleman City nine miles north.  There was quite an enthusiastic group
up at Santa Anna Mountain because of the prospect of the Gulf and Santa Fe Railroad going right
on through to a point about sixty miles west of there.  Santa Anna Mountain was in Coleman
county about 29 miles from Brownwood.  There was quite a little church there and they were very
much interested in their welfare and would like to build up and get in good shape before the
railroad came up there.  I went and held a meeting of two weeks with them and during that time
there were some seven professed conversions and among the rest one of the toughest men that
there was in the county.  He was a great hand to reason and use his own ideas of what
Christianity ought to be.  I spent I think about five nights till near midnight with him trying
to show him what the Bible taught and Paul taught and Christ taught in regard to what the
religion of Jesus Christ was.  The last night I spent with him I had brought on a great number
of professions and the last one I brought was from the gospel by John and I said to him, "You
are trying to find out what the work of a Christian is and I read you here what the Jews said
to Christ, 'What shall we do,' they said, 'that we may work the work of God.'  Christ replied
to them, 'This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He hath sent.'  "Now," I said,
"there are the superior assertions of Christianity brought down to a small point so that each
and every individual may be able to see it readily.  'He that believeth on the Son of God hath
everlasting life,'  He is doing the work of God, the work that God designed for him to do when
He sent His Son into the World."

The minutes afterward he said, "I see it all.  I have been on the wrong line.  It is not what I
do but what I believe and I can believe that with all my heart."  He was the first individual
ever baptized in Santa Anna Mountain.  The rest had all belonged to churches somewhere else
when they moved up there and it was very difficult to find a suitable place for baptism.  It
was ten miles to a stream large enough and holding water enough to immerse anyone, but there
was an artificial pond just at the edge of town that they said was plenty deep they thought but
that the bottom of the pond would be probably some muddy.  I went the next day and took a
stick, went into the pond and I found it drew deep quite rapidly from one side.  The other was
a long slant.  When I got out to proper depth for myself I found it would be too shallow for me
to handle him in the water.  I went a little farther and stuck my stick down and found there a
shelf that was at least a foot down from where I stood.  I investigated the whole thing
thoroughly so that I knew exactly where the ground lay and I stuck my stick just on the edge of
the shelf.  The next day when we went over to baptize, his standing about a foot below me gave
me all the advantage and while he was a large man and a good deal taller than I was, I made a
complete success by his standing so much lower than I was.  That started the matter pretty
thoroughly and the week was a very beneficial week.  His father-in-law was intimately
acquainted with old Brother Lee as we called him.  He was a very peculiar sort of an old
shooter and I have heard him preach for an hour and keep a chew of tobacco in his mouth all the
time and stop and spit, and yet nothing thought of it in that country because it was a tobacco
country.  Some of the finest ladies in Texas go around with a snuff stick, as they call it, in
their mouth.  It is a piece of willow chewed up until it becomes a little broom or brush on the
end.  They get that wet and put it in their snuff box and then rub it on the outside of their
back teeth and then let it stay there in their mouths for hours.

I had occasion while there to meet brother Robinette and I told him (he was at work at Coleman,
he was pastor at Coleman, went up there once a month) of the desirable place for baptism.
"Well," he said, "a month from now I will be up at Coleman again and I will speak to the church
at Coleman this time whether you can bring your candidates over there for baptism then."  I
told him all right, I was quite sure they would all be agreed to because the pond of water
there wasn't fit to baptize in because after baptizing two or three it would be so muddy it
would be almost filthy.  So at the end of that month the candidates and several of the members
went over to Coleman and I got Brother Robinette to baptize because I couldn't be there at the
time.  That opened a way for an acquaintance at Coleman so the two churches seemed to be
working together in good shape and everything was going on very nicely.  About two months from
that time we had a fifth Sunday meeting at Coleman and it was the whole of the association,
and, by the way, the Pecan Valley Association took in Brown county, Coleman county and two
other counties so that we had a very large territory to go over.  While we were at the fifth
Sunday meeting, a matter came up in regard to the condition of things at Williams ranch.
Williams Ranch was in Brown county though it was nearly thirty miles from Brownwood.

There was a dissatisfaction between two members of the church at Williams Ranch and the result
was there couldn't be anything done until that difficulty was prodded out.  So when the board
came together, they devised several plans by which it was to be done but they wouldn't settle
on anything unless I would agree to go to work for the State Board under the direction of the
board of the Pecan Valley Association to investigate and settle that difficulty if possible.
Rev. Robinette came to me and wanted to know if I would do it, and if I would go to work for
the Board for a month to try to get that matter settled so that the church would be more
peaceful.  I knew that I had no desire to be at work for any board.  I was a great hand for
liberty and I didn't want to be crippled by any Mission board or anything for that kind.  He
told me it was terrible case and didn't know whether I would be able to do anything with it or
not but it was worth the trying for.  I was to collect what I could at Williams Ranch and the
Association was to pay me so much for the month.  I told the Board that I would undertake it
but I must have the unbiased help of the Board and whatever was done, we would look for God to
do it and not man.

I went home from the Association Board and next Sunday I was at Williams Ranch, one of the
hardest places that there was in Brown county.  They were gamblers, drunken, impoverished men
throughout that section of the county.  There were here a few good, staunch Christian men
living in the little village called Williams Ranch that were solid, good, staunch Christian
men, but two of them had become so embittered against each other that they were carrying deadly
weapons and when I got among them and saw the spirit that prompted them in their work, I chose
one of the deacons and a physician's wife, who was a member of the church, to meet with me and
they should come one at a time, one should come one day and the other come on another day set,
and that we should hear them tell their difficulty and the reason why they could not be
reconciled.  The first day the husband of the lady member, who was a physician, I will not call
his name, only call him Judge, came the first day and made his statement and after he had made
his statement he said, "I am perfectly willing indeed to acknowledge my faults, to confess them
before the church and ask the church to forgive me and I am ready and willing at any time to
take the other brother, Jones, when not using a straight lace because they might still have an
opportunity to get it back.  Jones came and stated his case and it was terrible.  The ground
looked as though it would be impossible to do anything from the fact that he was not of a
forgiving spirit and when I asked him if he was ready and willing to go before the church and
make his confession and ask the church's pardon, he said, "Not as long as some people are in
the church."  I then asked him if he would be willing to take the doctor by the hand and ask
him to forgive him and would he be willing to forgive the doctor.  "Never," he said, "while the
world stands and I live on it."

Well, that was as far as we could go on that line.  My next move was to call the church
together and state what we had done and ask the membership of the church what would be their
wishes in the matter.  They all agreed that if the offending brethren, one or both came up to
the church and made their confessions and asked for forgiveness that it would be the duty of
the church and they believed the church would do it without a dissenting voice, grant them a
pardon and reinstate them.  So the next meeting I asked the clerk to notify them to appear
before the church as the church had charges of a very interesting matter, and it would be their
duty as well as privilege to come and acknowledge their fault to the brethren.  The doctor came
but the other man didn't come.  Jones was so bitter, going with his revolver in his pocket.
After I had gone down there the doctor told me that he was actually afraid of his life; that he
wouldn't injure Jones in any way, shape or manner, but if Jones came onto him, he would defend
himself the very best that he knew how.  The doctor made his confession frank, full, and said
that he had done very wrong and he hoped that the church would forgive him and that he would
endeavor as far as possible to keep himself away from meeting with Jones.  So at the close of
that meeting we decided to send Jones a notice that the church would hold a special business
meeting on such an evening and asked him to appear.  The meeting was held but he came not.
There was only one thing left to do.  He was a man that wouldn't hear the church, he was a man
who wouldn't be reconciled, and therefore the only thing for the church to do was to exclude
him; that he wasn't a man spiritual minded enough to be needed in the church.  The church came
together on Sunday night after the evening service for the purpose of taking a vote to know
what was the will of the church in regard to Jones.  They voted unanimously, every individual
member that was present voted to exclude him, withdraw the had of fellowship and leave him
outside of the pales of the Baptist church.  After that was completed he paid no attention to
it at all and we paid no attention to him.  I stayed and held meetings with them two weeks and
the last week we held meetings in the evening and also in the morning.  It was at the time of
the year when there was no school in the house and we could have it every night in week and in
the morning if we wanted it.  The result of that two weeks meeting was that the church was in
good working order, there had been some four or five conversions of men and women who had been
pretty hard cases, that had been baptized and received into the fellowship of the church.
About the time of closing of the meeting, I had all the work I could possibly attend to,
driving over 150 miles a month to get to my appointments and I couldn't see how I could take in
the work at Williams Ranch, but when I reported to the Association Board, they begged so hard
for me to stay, not as a missionary of the board, but to keep up the church and get it more
solid on its feet, that I agreed to stay two months.  During that time the railroad excitement,
the Galveston, Colorado and Santa Fe, grew very high.  Everybody was talking railroad and they
had heard things, and the report was general that the railroad would come through Williams
Ranch to Burlington.  But it didn't.  In less than a month it was settled that it was going
east of Williams Ranch some three miles to a place that the railroad named Goldthwaite.  The
result of that was that a great many people in Williams Ranch took down their houses, loaded
them onto wagons, hauled them over to Goldthwaite and put them up, and I saw very plainly that
there was no use spending time and wearing out myself at Williams Ranch, so I closed things up
there, nearly all of the members moved over to Goldthwaite.  I told the board there was nothing
to do for me further.  So it ran along for three or four months, people got moved over to
Goldthwaite and the town was building up.  As it was a railroad town, it grew up very quick.  I
got notice by mail that the membership at Williams Ranch or that had been at Williams Ranch
wanted I should come down to Goldthwaite and see what I could do about a church there.  Well,
as I was on missionary work, it was my duty as well as privilege to go and see what the
prospects were.  The first Sunday that I went down to Goldthwaite, held the service Saturday
afternoon, Saturday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night in a newly erected private house.
It was small and the seating of it was very difficult but we had a grand good meeting and the
Baptists that came together decided that they would organize a church known as the First
Baptist Church of Goldthwaite.  To accomplish that I would have to stay down there two or three
days.  I put it off for a month from the fact that it would delay a great deal of my work to
stay at that time.  In a month I went back and they had got another new building that was just
enclosed.  There were no partitions up and they had a pretty good room, and being warm weather,
we got along fine, organized the church, elected delegates and sent word by the clerk to other
churches to send delegates to hold council of recognition to come off a month from that time.
When the month came around, there was a good amount of delegates came together and recognized
the church in proper shape.  They are very bad in Texas about recognition.  Any little fault in
recognition often uses up the strength and influence of the church as I shall show further on.
So we concluded to hold a meeting on Monday after the recognition meeting on Monday and Monday
night as I couldn't stay any longer than that.  At that meeting they started right in on a
proposition of building a house.  There was no place to worship and the railroad was giving
churches lots and, therefore, the best thing we could do would be to start in at once.  So I
left on Tuesday morning for home with the understanding that when I came down a month from that
time, I was to solicit subscriptions for the house and to go to the railroad and get the lot
located and deeded from the railroad.  The month came round.  It seemed as though I had a big
job on hand but I went.  The first thing I did Monday morning after the Sabbath was to go to
the railroad offices and find out about a lot.  They told me that the church could have any lot
they chose on a certain street.  So they went out and showed me where the street was and I was
well satisfied that eventually it would be second business street as the other street ran right
along by the railroad track.  I got the lot staked out and chose it at the northeast end of the
second street from the railroad.  Then the next thing was to see how much could be done.  I
spent four days with them in finding who would do work and who would give money.  I soon had
work enough promised to do the whole work on the house.  Being a small town and the population
around the town was nothing, scarcely, it didn't require much of a house.  So we concluded to
have a house 30 x 40 and 10 feet in the clear.  One man said he would give all the stone, and
haul them, that were needed for the foundation.  Two other men said they would dig the
foundation and then would help the masons while they laid up the walls, and so it went on.
After four days I went home.  Everything was in pretty good shape but I knew there was plenty
of hard work to be done yet.  The next month when I went back, the house was pretty nearly
enclosed.  They were finishing up the shingling.  The next thing was to get some money to get
windows.  So Monday morning I went out into the town and every man I met I asked for a
contribution for windows for the house.  I picked up enough to get the windows and pay for them
and the carpenter was ready to put them in.  So I went home well pleased with the work.  When I
went back the next month I found things all in a muddle.  The Methodists had started a house,
quite an imposing structure, in the back part of town some five or six blocks from the railroad
and they had gotten about so far along and they couldn't get any further, so they wanted to
handicap the Baptist folks and they had come making a proposition to seat our house if we would
have a union sunday-school and let the day school be taught in the house.  Three of the members
of the church were quite inclined to fall in with the idea, but the rest of the church were all
bitterly opposed to it, and how to seat the house we hadn't an idea how it would be done.  We
had asked contributions for things until I told them that I felt as though we had gotten about
to the limit.  Three times I had been on the street picking up a dollar here and a dollar there
to help out.  One man that was not a member of the church was at the meeting.  "Well," he said,
"I will furnish you one seat.  I will make one seat and furnish it to the house."  Another man
stepped up and said, "I will have another made."  So they kept on to work and I told the
carpenter to make me two and I would pay for them.  When we got through we had seats enough
provided for, to seat the house comfortably and then we wanted to finish it inside as lathing
and plastering was not done much in that country in those days.  So I went over to the lumber
yard, found out about what good coiling would cost a thousand and I believed that I could make
it, so I started out and spent two days and got about enough money to buy for the ceiling and
ordered it sent up to the church.  When I went back the next month the ceiling was pretty
nearly up. so near that we made arrangements for dedicating the house.  In the meantime I saw
F.M. Carroll who was the state board secretary and engaged him to preach the dedicatory sermon.
I also asked the help of Brother Robinette of Brownwood who was more than anxious to assist.
The time came, the house was dedicated free from debt and a Sunday-school mass meeting held in
the afternoon.  At that mass meeting the church decided to have a Baptist Sunday-school and
only Baptist teachers in the school, but our Methodist friends were there and they tried with
all the ingenuity they had to work in and get a hold of the Sunday-school.

After that was done, I concluded that as soon as they could arrange for somebody else, that it
would be my duty to get work nearer home that was just as needful as down there, but it was a
grand move.  I had been from Texas about ten years when I learned by the paper that I was
taking then, that the congregation and church membership grew to that extent, that they had to
sell the house they were in and build a larger house and in less than ten years more they had
to sell again and build a large brick building, so that it was a prosperous, progress that I
made and there were but few knew the sacrifice that was made in establishing the First Baptist
Church at Goldthwaite, Texas.

My next work of importance was at Indian Creek, where we held an arbor meeting, I think the
meeting continued about four weeks and the church, everybody, was interested and an old lady by
the name of Foy, Mrs. Foy (she was a peculiar old lady but a wholehearted servant of God) used
to get pretty happy in those meetings and it was nothing uncommon at all to hear her speak out,
thanking God, or "Glory to God," or something of that kind to show that she was right into the
work all the time.  The meeting resulted in some twenty odd conversions.  I had no help, only
the Lord's help in the work and the brethren were good substantial workers.  The meeting ended
and about the time that it closed there was a great stir in Bell county.  I knew some two or
three ministers that I had met that were at work down there, a Rev. Lamford and Rev. Samuel
Blair.  I had met them and they had written me to come down to their meeting and help them.
Well, I looked the matter over.  It was a big undertaking and it was a good ways down there and
I hadn't any money to throw away and it would cost me money to go down there on the railroad
because it was pretty near 100 miles, but I went and we had a wonderful meeting.  Out under an
arbor that would seat at least three or four hundred people comfortably and when I went in
there I was very forcibly impressed by the appearance of some members that the church wasn't at
work, the church wasn't entering heartily into the meeting.  So I think it was about the third
day, I stayed a week, about the third day an old sister by the name of Upshawl rose up in the
conference part of the meeting and told how cold she was, and I thought to myself, "You haven't
missed it."  She turned around to me and asked me to pray for her that she might get warmed up.
I made this response.  I said, "Mrs. Upshawl, if I was going past your house and I was very
cold and you had a good fire in your house and I stood outside in the cold, wouldn't go to
where the fire was, do you think I would get warm?  The best way when we are cold to get warm
is to go to the fire.  Now the best thing you can do is to go to God and fellowship in Christ
and the Holy Spirit and you will get warm.  My building material won't warm you, you want to
get near the fire."  Some of them thought I was the hardest Baptist they had ever seen, but the
next day that lady stood up in a large conference meeting and told just how she got warm.
While I was there, there was a little church about five miles from there known as the church of
Dyers Creek, and they were just determined that I should come and preach for them.  "I am
located way up in Brown county and I couldn't come down here to serve a little church once a
month."  I was engaged in that association and had about all I could attend to.  In about a
week a letter came up from there urging strong.  Then I also got a letter from a Baptist church
at Holland, Texas.  Holland was about three miles east from Dyers Creek.  Post Oak Grove, where
I had been helping them in a meeting, was three miles north and a little west of Holland and
they said that if I would come down there they believed that they could make arrangements so
that I could serve Dyers Creek and Holland both, and then there was a great many churches out
within ten or fifteen miles of reach.  Well, I studied the matter over and tried to dismiss it
from my mind entirely, but it kept on my mind until I wrote them an answer that under the
present circumstances I could hardly consider their request from the fact that they had a
pastor at Holland and that there were several good men in that vicinity that could meet and
preach to the church at Dyers Creek, and so I thought I had better dismiss the matter.  It ran
along about a month, nothing heard from it.  Finally two deacons of Dyers creek and the clerk
of the church of Holland got together, formed a committee and wrote me their decision, that
their pastor's time would be out at such a time, that I was well acquainted with him, and that
they wanted I should take the field; but I would not yet decide.  About a month from that time
I decided to go down and look the field over and make up my mind what was best to do.  I went
down, met the committee of both churches and they said they were unanimous about it with the
exception of one man who was the wealthiest man in the church and who had large family
connections, were not in favor of keeping the man that they had.  I heard them through and I
said, "I will go home and I will take two weeks.  At the end of two weeks I will inform you
what I will do."  That one man who was not heartily in favor I was a little shy of.  I had seen
some trouble in churches of that description and one man can make more trouble than six men can
settle.

In June of 1884 I took a trip with Parson Robinette over on the Texas, Pac. Road to a city
called Cole.  We neither of us expected to go over there when we left home.  My appointment was
at Santa Anna Mountain.  Pastor Robinette was at Coleman at the same time.  He drove his team
and I drove mine and we decided before we got up there that we would go over to Cole City to
hear the wonderful singer and evangelist, Penn.  Penn was a very big man, a lawyer by
profession and a deist for the best part of his life.  He was in St. Louis at one time and
heard the great expounder Getter.  Getter told Penn that if he would come and pay strict
attention and wouldn't be biased in his mind, he would assure him that he couldn't get away
from being a converted man.  Penn went.  He heard Getter's two discourses and he was so
overcome with the facts that were set forth even from a point of view that he saw he was an
open rebel against God.  The third night Penn sat only three seats from the rostrum and before
Getter got half through with his discourse that night, Penn rose right up and asked permission
to speak.  He then and there before that vast audience in St. Louis professed Christianity and
was baptized the very same night.  He closed up his law office and at once went out proclaiming
the truths as they are recorded in God's Word and he had the most wonderful success.  It was
nothing uncommon the have from three to five hundred conversions at his meetings.  So, Pastor
Robinette and I concluded that we would take the trip and go and hear Penn two days and nights.
The distance was eighty miles from Coleman and when I went over to Coleman, Robinette concluded
that if I would let him ride with me, he would send his team home with a friend who was with
him.  I said all right I thought the ponies could carry us.  We started from Coleman the next
morning just at sun-up.  We had gotten an early lunch and at sun-up started out of Coleman and
the sun an hour high in the month of June I think it was we landed in Cole City.  The city had
built a very large tabernacle.  It was 100 feet wide and 130 feet long and every night that
tabernacle was packed with people.  He was one of the finest singers for a man that I ever
heard and would put the most expression in the songs that he sang.  Of course, he had his own
singing book, called the "Harvest Bells."  It was a splendid gospel singing book.  The first
night there were over fifty conversions as we sat and heard men and women, young and old
confess Christ before the public.  It was no card business, just simply every man was
determined to follow Christ, he wanted him to get up and tell it and there were some wonderful
talks made by those people that night.  The next morning there was a special meeting because
there was a special discourse.  He had stated the night before that in the morning he would
expose publicly the false doctrine of Camelism, salvation by water, and he said that he would
be able to prove that their doctrine was salvation by works through water.  In the morning the
crowd came together and the tabernacle was well filled.  One old man was a strong Camelite, or
modernly called Christian, came in and sat down just back of the inquirer seat.  All those
inquirer seats had a sign on the back of the seat so that there wasn't anyone expected or
allowed to take those seats that were not seekers after the truth.  That old gentleman, I
remember him well, came in and sat down in the first row back of the inquirer seats.  He had
quite a large cane and he had a long goatee and was quite gray.  He set the cane down on the
ground floor and then put both hands on top of the cane and rested his chin on it.  After Penn
had discoursed about fifteen minutes on the subject, the old man got up with his cane, tottered
out through the aisle to the door and that was the last of him.  It was too strong for him.  We
stayed two days and two nights and I never heard so much real gospel both in singing and
speaking as we heard those two days.  Penn carried with him a small cottage organ that he could
fold up and put it in the shape of a trunk so that he always carried it with him.  Rev. Penn
was a major in the confederate army and weighed a little over three hundred pounds, a good
sized man and he had a voice that never tired.  He spoke always one hour.  He never cut off
short of an hour.  The next morning we started for home, the morning of the third day from
Coleman we started back for Coleman.  We put up at noon to feed at a house that we were
strangers to and yet we found them good Christian people.  We stayed to dinner and had a short
visit and as soon as we got the ponies rested a little and fed, we rode on again.  We got to
Coleman just before the sun went down and I supposed that my ponies were pretty tired, Pastor
Robinette said he thought they must be pretty tired making the eighty miles in the day.  We
took the harness off and they at once kicked up their heels and played and felt first rate.
The next morning we started for Brownwood and Pastor Robinette said he must be home by twelve
because he had a special appointment for twelve.  "Well," he said, "it isn't but thirty miles
and if we get a reasonable start we can make it all right."  But we didn't get started till
about eight o'clock and he thought we couldn't make it.  Ten minutes before twelve I drove up
to his gate and let him out and he was home all right.  The ponies weren't hurt and we had
heard one of the greatest evangelists there was in the state of Texas, in fact he was hard to
beat in the world.  He spent one winter in Scotland, he spent one winter in England and three
or four other foreign points where he went and labored as an evangelist on truth the entire
season.

Up to this time I had not given up any of the work that had been placed in my hands in Brown
county or in Coleman county or in Lampasas county.  I tried to make it round every month which
gave me a good deal of driving.  About this time I had concluded that I would change my field
of work.  The call was so urgent from Bell county and from Mills county that I thought I would
have to take the work.  But just how to make the change was quite a task.  I didn't have means
to ship my stuff. I could take a railroad car and put all of my things into it and send it down
to Temple, Texas.  There it would have to change onto the M.K.&T. and run south to Holland.  As
time wore on and as time for exchange drew near, I decided that I would ship my household goods
and I would put the two youngest children onto the train and send them down to Temple where
their brothers were in the printing business and let them stay there until I could straighten
around at Holland and then they could come down from there to Holland any day, and that my wife
and myself would take the buggy and ponies and we would drive through, about 115 miles.  So the
time came round and we made all the arrangements and I had no difficulty no way, and we started
out and the first night we spent near Lometa.  We made about fifty miles the first day.  The
second day we made about fifty more and stopped within ten miles of Holland with an old Baptist
family that I was acquainted with a little, more by reputation than by meeting them, but we
were very nicely entertained, comfortable, everything was in nice shape and we spent the second
night with them.  The next day about ten o'clock we rode into Holland and I think we put up
with Dr. Taylor's folks for that day.  The next day our goods came down and we at once began to
straighten up.  Our house was a very inferior concern to be called a house even in Texas.
There were two rooms, a fireplace in one room and the only place that we had to sleep was in
those two rooms, but it was the best that we could do at that time, and as we soon got used to
it, we got along very comfortably as we were all healthy all the time.  The only trouble we
had, my wife's eyes were bad from granulated lids.  The next day we got straightened up pretty
well, so that by the last of the week the two children came down from Temple and we were all at
home again on an entirely new field and on Saturday I had an appointment over at Dyer's creek.
I went over and we had a splendid turnout and met Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, Sunday
morning, Sunday night.  I put up with a man by the name of George Robinson.  He was a solid,
good substantial man and in fact he was the main stay of the progress of the church at that
place, located about three miles from Holland.  Northeast of Holland about three miles was a
church by the name of Post Oak Grove Baptist Church and there was a very large membership.  The
second Saturday that we were in Holland, the Holland Baptist Church held a meeting and decided
to call me to the pastorate and as one member told me that it was a unanimous vote on the first
ballot, excepting one man by the name of Wilkinson made some little objections, and one of his
principal objections was that I was a Union soldier and had lost my arm in the service fighting
against the South, but I learned afterward that his main objection was that the man that they
had had was his right hand man, that whatever Wilkinson wanted went because Parson Blair and he
were of one accord and one mind, but I accepted the call although the church at Holland had no
place of worship only in a sort of a union of different denominations who had joined together
and built the house and they gave them the right and privilege of the house one Saturday and
Sunday in each month, but it was known as the Carmeline Presbyterian church house.  I soon
found that there was something radically wrong in the church somewhere and after a few months
Dr. Taylor told me were the trouble was.  The thing that puzzled me very much was that there
were a great many Baptist people living south and two miles from Holland that went right
through Holland on the same day that we had service and went out to Post Oak Grove three miles
and had their membership out there, but the Baptists in Texas are very tenacious organizations.
They will not receive any one into the church that has been excluded from another Baptist
church and not been reinstated before he was received.  This man Wilkinson had been excluded
from Post Oak Grove and would never make any confession to the church, nor ask any forgiveness
of the church nor anything of the kind and consequently remained excluded and when the church
at Holland was organized, he was the man who started it and through his influence and money and
large family, he was enabled to organize the church at Holland which made the organization
illegal.  The man that organized it was an excluded man from another church and had never been
reinstated at the Post Oak Grove church.  Parson Blair undertook to carry the thing right along
with that burden continually on the church and the result was that there had not been an
addition to the church nor a conversion in the church for years.  That was the way things stood
when I went to Holland.  That same summer we had some very glorious, grand revival meetings.
The special meetings in Texas are always held in the summer, generally in the months of July
and August.  After I had been in Holland perhaps six months, I became acquainted with a man by
the name of M. T. Morton. Morton was a grand student of the Bible and especially of the New
Testament, and he was opposed by a good many because he took the ground that a person who
joined the church and was baptized when they joined were not Baptists at all.  The result was
that in his plain way of expounding in a logical way in which he presented it to people, often
members of the church would say that they just joined the church in order to be with their
friends and relatives and that they liked the convenience of the Baptist church, therefore they
were Baptists and they had never been and when that was made plain the church would always call
for their Bible and Morton was a real Baptist but he took the plain broad ground that without
regeneration there was no such thing as baptism.

The second summer we held a series of meetings at Dyers creek.  Morton was there all through
and all of the ministers around in that section of the country near came in on the fifth Sunday
and we had a grand time.  The result of the meeting was thirty odd conversions.  It was three
miles out of the little town of Holland just in a good place.  During that meeting my two
youngest children were converted and were baptized together both at the same time.  We had to
go with private conveyances of ten miles to the river where we could get water for baptism.
That built up and strengthened Dyers creek so that it was quite a force in the association.

At that time I had the pastorate of three churches, one at Holland, one at Dyers creek and one
at Lalock.  Dyers creek had a very substantial lot of members.  They were all well posted on
the usages of Baptist churches in the South and they were very particular to see to it that all
the members of the church were in fellowship.

One member, whom I will designate as George Write, undertook to be the whole of it but he soon
found that he was alone.  He criticized the pastor on some work that was done which was
strictly in accordance with the usages of the church.  His language was such that his brother-
in-law, with two others, one a deacon and the other a trustee, at the monthly meeting gave
notice to the church that from the best that they could find out and understand, he was not in
fellowship with the church and they requested that the senior deacon with the clerk and one
member that they might select should go and visit him and ascertain why he had done so.  They
did their work and reported to the church.  He sent word that he had done nothing out of the
way and that he wouldn't come before the church at all.

Two months from that time this same brother-in-law moved that he be excluded from the church.
They laid it over one month and when they came together again, they were all of one accord and
unanimously voted his exclusion.

Then his wife and son took the matter up to fight the church because they had excluded the
husband and father, but they only got themselves into the same condition.

After that harmony and peace reigned in the church continually.

Dyers creek was only three miles from Holland and it was almost like a mission church which I
shall have something to say in regard to later on.

The Lalock church was eighteen miles east of Holland.  I went over there once a month.  There
was one man by the name of Chamberlain (I don't remember his initials now).  He was a new
Englander, but he would lay aside oftentimes what he knew to be strictly right and honest for
the praise of his neighbors.  He was a strict prohibitionist and a very consistent Christian
man in every way and manner, but he never got quite used to the plain way which Baptists preach
in Texas and in the South generally, but he never made any disturbance.  He lived there and
moved with his son-in-law, who was a doctor, first to Boone, Iowa.  He was there some two or
three years, but he finally went back again, he and his son-in-law to Texas.

It was a pretty rough corner.  They had frequently talked preachers down in that community by a
low conversation all the time that the man was preaching.  Well, in Texas the pastor of the
church has just as much authority to arrest a man who is making a disturbance as the sheriff,
and I made up my mind that they couldn't come that on me.  They commenced it.  They were young
men mostly from sixteen to twenty.  I stopped and said to them, "How I am very thankful that
you have a disposition to come to the place where God is to be worshiped, but I want to tell
you that I have the first privilege here, and it is very unbecoming of a young man or a young
lady to hold a conversation while another is speaking.  I wish you wouldn't do it."

So it ran along and before I got through with my subject that Sunday morning, they commenced it
again, and I said that I wouldn't worry their patience, I would close.  I only had one or two
points more to dwell on and then I would give them all the opportunity to talk all they wanted.
They quieted down again.  The next time I went over, they came in full force.  I think there
were something like a dozen of them in a bunch together and they commenced soon after I took up
my subject.  They didn't do it while we were singing or reading the Scripture.  I finally
stopped and said, "Now if you can't keep quiet and behave, your absence is a great deal better
than your company."

They got pretty mad and that man Chamberlain thought I was too harsh.  Another old man living
there said, "It is just right.  We have the right to use that house one Saturday and Sunday in
each month and we don't purpose to be run over at all.  We go there to worship, and we can't
worship when there are a lot that are talking in an undertone all the time."

One young man and two young ladies got up and left the room after I had said what I did and it
was three months before they ever came back again.  When they came back they were civil and
quiet and I had no more trouble over there.

The Holland church was in a very shaky condition because it had not been legally organized and
it was impossible to get a congregation that amounted to anything at Holland.  But I stayed
along and worked with them the best I could.  They had no house of worship (I believe I stated
before in regard to that) but there came a day when there was a majority of the church
determined they would have a Baptist church of their own.  This organization at Holland,
according to the usages of the South, was not a legal Baptist church.  So they got together and
they formed a body of fifteen members.  They made out their bylaws, their constitution, and
articles of faith and everything they adopted.  I helped them in arranging it and they wanted
me to sit as moderator of the organization.  I told them no, that I was pastor of the other
church and I would not do that.  So they got it all fixed up and when the organization council
was called, I was called as one of the presbyters.  I wouldn't go.  I told them I could not
accept that but they went right on.  They were organized all right, went right along, and
during this time one man by the name of Wilkinson thought to oust me out of the pastorate of
the Holland church.  He worked an underhanded scheme, but a man by the name of Taylor, Dr.,
Taylor, who was on the outside, belonging to the church a Post Oak which was three miles north
and a mile west of Holland, got hold of all the performance of Wilkinson and told me what was
coming.  So I kept my eye out and my temper down so that I would be prepared any time that he
would come.