The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 53, July 1949 - April, 1950 Page: 243
538 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Antecedents of Austin College
leave it. They reached San Augustine in late spring of 1838
where they set up their first modest Texas home. Wilson began
laying the foundation of his new work by preaching in Goodlaw
Schoolhouse about four miles west of town. Within a few weeks
in the same location he organized the first Presbyterian church
on Texas soil on June 2, 1838. Twenty-two persons, including
two Negro slaves, founded the Bethel congregation.
Within four months after Bethel was organized, Hugh Wilson
and his neighbor, John McFarland, a recent addition to the
Bethel congregation, for unknown reasons, pulled stakes and
headed west with their families. They settled south of the con-
fluence of the Yegua and Brazos rivers where John P. Coles had
already established a settlement bearing his name, which, after
the Battle of San Jacinto, was known as Independence.
The community's school had been closed because of the war.
After the war it was replaced by Independence Academy, the
first school chartered under the Republic of Texas. The new
school had as president of its board of trustees John P. Coles.
Shortly after its opening, Wilson was elected to the board and
made a teacher, in which capacity he helped with the instruction
of the fifty boarding students in addition to preaching in the
near-by settlements on Sundays. A few miles west of Independ-
ence in Chreisman's Settlement near Mount Prospect he found
interested Presbyterians desiring to organize, and in February,
1839, the second Presbyterian church in Texas came into being.
Mount Prospect Church at the outset numbered twelve members
and included among its three elders Wilson's friend, John Mc-
Farland.5
By the time the Texas work was well under way, the Mississippi
Synod in 1838 made overtures to the assembly suggesting that
the time was ripe for a presbytery in Texas. Accordingly in 1839
the matter was referred back to Mississippi "with advice to or-
ganize a presbytery as soon as the interests of religion seem to
require it." Pursuant to this authority the Mississippi Synod
directed "Reverends W. C. Blair, Hugh Wilson, W. Y. Allen,
and John McCullough to meet together at such time and place
in the Republic of Texas as may be convenient to themselves and
sT. M. Cunningham, Hugh Wilson, a Pioneer Saint (Dallas, 1938), 1-63.243
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 53, July 1949 - April, 1950, periodical, 1950; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101126/m1/319/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.