Historical Commission

Current Project:
The history of our congregations

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Congregational assistance is requested.

The document below is a draft of a project the Historical Commission has been working on for about a year. Your help is requested to complete it. Some of the information in it may be wrong. Some of it is incomplete.

We would like to know every clergy person who has served at any of the congregations in the diocese from the beginning. We would like to have full names, along with birth and death dates. Please look over the listing for your congregation. If you have been at more than one church, please look at the listing for any church you know about. If you can add or correct any of the information here, please contact the diocesan archivist, David White, at dawh63@gmail.com. Thank you and God bless you.

Churches and Clergy in the Diocese of West Texas - PDF, current as of April 2021

History helps provide identity to a people, says the American Historical Association (www.historians.org). The identity of the Diocese of West Texas begins when Bishop Robert W. B. Elliott, the first bishop of the Missionary District of Western Texas, took the train from Atlanta to end of the track in the raw territory of Texas and held his first church service in Luling from the back of a Pullman coach. That was 1874, and in the almost 150 years since, the identity and history of the Diocese of West Texas has continued to be built through dedicated clergy and lay people.

The caretaker of the history of the Diocese of West Texas is the diocesan Historical Commission. It’s the job of the commission, with the diocesan archivist, to collect, archive, and make available important documents as well as the history of the diocese and its churches.

The archives include files on diocesan churches, both active and former, as well as past bishops of the diocese and other important persons and events. The journals of all diocesan councils are in the archives, as are copies of The Church News, the diocesan newspaper.

This information is available when the diocesan office is open, generally Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but it is best accessed with the help of the diocesan archivist, Mr. David White (reach him at dawh63@gmail.com).

Other Resources

• What are these Articles of Religion, and Why are they in My Episcopal Prayer Book?, by Tim Rose, Ph. D. Click here to open this resource.
• A Guide for Developing Congregational Archives, by David White, diocesan Archivist, and Anne Cassidy, St. Christopher's, Bandera Archivist. Click here to open this resource.
• A Missionary Church in a Frontier Society, by Tom Lee. Download it here.
• Celebrate! A short pamphlet designed to help congregations plan for their anniversaries. Click here to open this resource.
• Hallowed Ground, an 80-page monograph tracing the history of the Bishop Jones Center grounds, beginning 12,000 years ago. The book was written by Marjorie George, Adult Christian Formation & Wisdom Years leader.
• "The Sounds of (Church) Music" an article by Carl Leafstedt featured in the Spring/Summer 2017 edition of Reflections.
• A Report on the Investigation into the Location of the Lost Community of Chocolate, Calhoun County, Texas, prepared by David Allen White, diocesan Archivist, and conducted by the Historical Commission

The Historical Commission encourages congregations to research and write their own histories, and commission members are available to help with that.

Contact

For more information about the above resources or the diocesan archives, email:

Archivist: David White, dawh63@gmail.com‍

Historiographer: Tom Lee, tomcarolee@att.net

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