0.12 3.2 women's activities prior to 1880  (Page 2/4)

There was a pious sister named Echols who lived near Gonzales. She was a devoted Baptist and loved her Bible dearly. The Bible, however, was a prohibited book, and severe penalties were meted out if one were found in a family's possession. On one occasion, Sister Echols saw a Mexican justice approaching and was tempted to hide the Bible she had been reading. She quickly committed her way unto the Lord and kept the Bible in her hands. Witnessing her devotion to the Book of. God, the Mexican justice's heart failed him, and he allowed her to keep it. Morrell, P. 73.

Women were also recorded making gifts of their "mites" and performing benevolent acts, maintaining their posts "at the bedside of the sick and administering to the wants of the poor." Link, I, 286. Dr. John Lockhart painted a colorful picture of those "good old mothers of the olden times" in his reminiscences of the days of the Republic of Texas, published in the Galveston Daily News in 1897. After making early-Sunday preparations for a large meal, they would don their black silk dresses and bonnets that "had seen service away back in the states." Once in church, they generally occupied the benches near the front so there was space "to [spread] down their riding skirts for their babies to wallow on." Wallis, Jonnie L., Sixty Years on the Brazos: The Life and Letters of Dr. John Washington Lockhart, 1824-1900 (Waco: Texian Press, 1967), p. 147. Dr. Lockhart analyzed those times as "more primitive in habits, customs, and religion" than the late-nineteenth century and claimed the women entered wholeheartedly into the worship: "The old sisters were not ashamed to praise God in audible voices and the preachers knew it, and were loth to say nay to it." Ibid., p. 151.

Another portrait of the informal, familial piety manifested by Texas Baptist women in the mid-nineteenth century was left by Mrs. Elizabeth Pyle of Ladonia, in northeast Texas, referring to an associational gathering of seventy-five (representatives of several churches within a geographical area) held in a private home. The women of the family prepared food for the group ahead of time and served it on long tables outdoors, ladling coffee from a large kettle in the yard. Men slept in the living room, women in the bedroom, and the overflow in the covered wagons in which they had traveled. Mr s. W. J. J. Smith, p. 53. Mrs. B. A. Copass indicated that this scene was duplicated many times "even down to the nineties." Elliott, p. 207.

The groups of women that gathered in other Baptist churches throughout the state, as they did in Nacogdoches around Mrs. Bledsoe and Mrs. Millard, were called by various names: "Ladies Aid Society," "Industrial Society," or "Dorcas Society" Named after a biblical woman known for her good deeds, particularly her sewing for widows. Acts 9:36-41. were common, with "Mission Societies" becoming more popular in the 1870s when interest in that phase of religious activity intensified. The focus of the early groups appeared to be preparing and maintaining places of worship. Predictably, the most active societies formed around Independence where Baylor University provided ample opportunities for women's traditional ministrations. Not only were there church buildings, but dormitories as well, to be equipped and furnished and students to be welcomed and socialized. Acceptance of women organizing to fill these functions was no doubt enhanced by the presence of a number of female students and teachers and by male administrators who were sympathetic to advanced education for women. William Carey Crane, president of Baylor University from 1864 to 1885, was one of those strong advocates of women's banding together for religious causes. As a result of these conducive conditions, the first woman missionary from Texas and the first state president of the Woman's Missionary Union (hereafter, abbreviated WMU)—in fact, the heart of that organization—were from Independence.