*Below is a submission by Gene Deason and Sue Jones, members of Union Presbyterian Church in Brownwood, Texas. Both Gene and Sue are active members of the Union church and both have served on the Committee on Ministry in Palo Duro Presbytery, Gene is the retired editor of the Brownwood Bulletin and Sue is the retired superintendent of the Brownwood School District. Thanks to both for submitting this column.
In 1875, saloons in Brownwood, Texas, outnumbered churches, 7-0. A missionary and an evangelist affiliated with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Tennessee decided to change that.
Exactly 150 years later, the history of that pioneer ministry is being celebrated by Brownwood area Presbyterians.
The Rev. S.M. Lewis, an itinerant missionary of Little River Presbytery, came to Brownwood in the spring of 1875. Lewis invited Lebanon, Tennessee, evangelist Dixon Williams — who was not ordained — to hold a protracted tent meeting in the summer of 1875.
Their efforts led to the organization on September 18, 1875, of what local historians say was the first church of any denomination in Brownwood — although other churches had previously formed in Brown County. The first was a Methodist congregation at Hannah Valley (later Regency) in 1863.
T.R. Havins in his book “Something About Brown” and other local history timelines name Cumberland Presbyterian Church as the first congregation to organize in Brownwood. It is from their works along with church records that much of the following information is taken.
In 1906, Cumberland became Austin Avenue Presbyterian after changing denominations. In 1967, the congregation merged with First Presbyterian Church of Brownwood to form Union Presbyterian Church at 700 Fisk. Members continue holding services there as part of Palo Duro Presbytery, Presbyterian Church (USA).
Until they merged, both churches had welcomed worshippers for almost a century at locations separated by six city blocks and the Santa Fe Railway tracks.
This month (September), the congregation is beginning a year-long celebration of the 150th anniversaries of both Presbyterian churches in Brownwood. A Texas Historical Marker commemorating “Presbyterians in Brownwood” is pending through the Texas Historical Commission with assistance from the Brown County Historical Commission.
After the Cumberland congregation formed in 1875, First Presbyterian Church organized on September 10, 1876. They were affiliated with different Presbyterian denominations and remained that way for almost a century until they merged in 1967 to become Union Presbyterian.
The congregation followed two Books of Order, with leaders using the requirements of the one deemed more stringent where they differed. When the north-south rift dating from the Civil War was set aside through a historic national merger in 1983, only one Book of Order was needed.
The national churches caught up with what Brownwood Presbyterians had done 16 years earlier. Members suggested they were “union before union was cool.”
In early 1875, immediately upon arriving in Brownwood, the Cumberland evangelist had the stagecoach driver take him to all seven of the town’s saloons. According to Havins’s book, he went inside and asked the men to attend that night’s meeting. The preacher gave the owner of the first saloon he visited a robust hug, and the owner’s wife was one of the first converts. Some of those saloon patrons became members when Lewis organized a Cumberland church on September 18, 1875. Lewis opened worship with an original membership of 11.
The church went without a pastor for several years, relying instead on visiting ministers from the Presbytery. Members met at Central Ward School at Main and Anderson, as did most churches until they could build sanctuaries. Rev. R.W. Lewis was the first resident pastor, and he was succeeded by Rev. F.E. Lawler.
Social progress continued in pioneer Brownwood during 1876 as at least three congregations, all still in existence, organized — First Baptist, First Methodist, and First Presbyterian. By 1880, the city’s population was 725, according to Census records.
Cumberland Presbyterian began work on a brick building on May 10, 1886, at an Austin Avenue and Irma location where it stood for decades. Work on a larger sanctuary adjacent to it began in 1900, and it was occupied in 1901.
After many Cumberland churches affiliated with a national Presbyterian denomination in 1906, Session records indicate the name Austin Avenue Presbyterian Church was used instead of Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Brownwood.
Austin Avenue and First Presbyterian church leaders had discussed uniting since the early 1960s. When Union Presbyterian Church was created in July 1967, the merger was a good fit. First Presbyterian Church had no pastor at the time, and Austin Avenue Presbyterian’s facility was aging. The pastor of Austin Avenue — the Rev. Charlie Morris — was called to lead the congregation. First Presbyterian’s worship center at Fisk and Depot had been finished in 1923, after vacating a building three blocks away.
Worship services initially alternated between the two sanctuaries, but only the former First Presbyterian Church site was large enough to comfortably accommodate the combined congregations. The Austin Avenue building was used less frequently.
Until a storm and lightning strike severely damaged the vacant building in 1969, the unified church had wondered what to do with it. Ironically, the storm hit exactly 83 years after construction first began in 1886, on May 10. The city condemned the historic building.
When the structure was razed, Pastor Morris told a newspaper reporter, “What to do with it was decided by an act of God.”
The property was sold in 1972, and Rex’s Texas Lanes bowling center occupies that block now.
The large bell that was rung to call members to worship, along with three stained glass windows rescued from the Austin Avenue ruins, were moved to Union’s building. Other windows are incorporated into the stairway of Howard Payne’s Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom. That structure is the former Daniel Baker College administration building founded in 1889 as a Presbyterian college by the Rev. Dr. B.T. McClelland. He was also the founder of First Presbyterian-Brownwood and its first pastor.
Bricks and timbers from Austin Avenue Presbyterian found their way to a church at Lake Brownwood and the Third Street home of long-time member Esther Yell. Various furnishings, a studio piano, paintings, and other items were brought from Austin Avenue to the former First Presbyterian location, which had become the new Union church site.
The church’s museum in a room adjacent to Union’s sanctuary holds a wealth of additional resources about the congregations.
The Rev. Dr. Scott Campbell of Lubbock, executive presbyter of Palo Duro Presbytery, will help kick off the celebration, leading morning worship on Sunday, September 21.
To preview the observance, Union church last year made donations of $1,875 each to two organizations with ties to local history and church members — Greenleaf Cemetery and the Brown County Museum of History. Dr. McClelland and his wife are buried in the historic cemetery, and longtime church member Pauline Hochhalter was active with the museum during her lifetime.
Dr. Sue Jones, a member of the board of the Presbyterian Historical Society of the Southwest, is a Ruling Elder and member of Union Presbyterian, Brownwood. Her great-grandfather was Dr. McClelland, founder and first pastor of First Presbyterian, and founder and first president of Daniel Baker College. First Presbyterian holds a rich, parallel history that will be explored at its 150th anniversary in 2026.
