History of the Methodist Churches in Holdenville

Barnard Memorial UMC (mah/2015)

The Methodist Church in Holdenville: A Brief History

In the softly rolling hills of what would become known as Hughes County it is reported that a small settlement emerged in the Creek Nation known as “Echo” (“Acho”), a word in the Creek language meaning “deer.”   The small hamlet’s name was changed to “Fentress” when it was first given established a post office on May 24, 1895. Then, as was often the case, the name changed again with the spread of the rail lines and honored a rail road company worker , J. F. Holden, an employee of the CO&G. On November 15, 1895 the community was christened “Holdenville” replacing the earlier Fentress designation.

Railroads were stitching together the territories and these would prove to be the major source of its economic growth for several decades. At Holdenville two lines crossed.  Coming from the east and angling southwest was the St. Louis and San Francisco.  Northwest to Southeast was the powerful Chicago, Pacific and Rhode Island.  Over the course of the first thirty years the battles for supremacy and control of the ‘lines’ in Oklahoma would be the cause of exciting expansion and boom as well as intriguing mysteries. 

Methodism had been in “Indian Territory”, the eastern half of the present day state of Oklahoma, since the before the middle of the 1800’s but were solidly in place as an effective work by the 1880’s.  The first efforts were missionary activities with the various tribal groups in the area of Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. The three arms of Methodism: Methodist Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal, South, and the Methodist Protestants all established work in the region to differing levels of success. Some of the earliest advocacy of a union of all the branches of Methodism emerged from this Indian Territory work.

According to Turner’s History of the Methodist Church in Holdenville, 1897-1952, the first church organized in Holdenville was the Methodist Episcopal *1896-1910.  A retrospective article in the Holdenville Times of Jan.23,1903 indicated that in March of 1896 they first met in the Choctaw Rail Depot in service with a Rev. King or Fling.  They were formally organized in the same place a year later with a Rev. Woodson as pastor. Charter members were listed as the family (wife and daughter) of J. Smith, Mrs. Joe Northrup, Mrs. Frank Lowe, and Mrs. D. Lowe.

A wooden frame building on East 8^th Street was dedicated in February of 1897.  In 1913 the building was sold to the Episcopal Church as the Methodist Episcopal Church withdrew its work in Holdenville due to a larger retrenchment in the region.  The so-called Methodist Episcopal North would come back into the area in 1921. In1923, however, the two Methodist groups proactively united, reflecting groundswell desires not to be reflected in denominational structures until 1939. At that time, the three largest Methodist groups in America were the Methodist Episcopal (M.E.), the Methodist Episcopal, South (M.E.,S) and the  Protestant (M.P.). These three would form the nucleus of the new Methodist Episcopal Church (M.E.C.).

 

Part I   The First Fifty Years                        1897 -1947

There were in the earliest day’s representatives of both the Methodist Episcopal and the Methodist Episcopal, South working in the area of Holdenville.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South

J.L. Adair, charter member, bought on behalf of the M.E.,S two city lots from one John Jacobs on 25 September 1897, indicating church formation and building followed each other closely. Although written down a few years later, a 1900 list identifies the following as charter members: Mr. James L. Adair, Mr. and Mrs. L. B. Henderson (who together owned the Commercial Hotel and he was the 5^th mayor holding office in 1903); Mrs. Robert (Ida Barnard) McFarlin, Mrs. W.J. Red, Mrs. Thomas E.(Laura Larue) Neal, Mrs. C.W. Polk.  It was conjectured by Turner in her history that there were other “possible” charter members. These were Mr. and Mrs. C.M. Alten (Allen), Mrs. Tom Scale, Mrs. George B. Roderich, and Mrs. H.H. Holman.  In 1906, Robert McFarlin joined after a revival meeting with Abe Mulkey. He served on the Board of Trustees in 1910.  The church name, “Barnard Memorial United Methodist Church”, stems from the supportive presence of the McFarlins as members and friends of the Methodist work in Holdenville and the region.  McFarlin started in farming and ranching but as  Turner notes that just as the Fine Arts Auditorium at Southern Methodist university in Texas, the library at Tulsa University and other  locations had been given the privilege of naming their facilities after the McFarlin’s, the Methodist work in Holdenville had also been granted that opportunity.

Holdenville (M.E.,S) is mentioned in the 1^st Minutes of the 1897 (November) Conference. The Rev. A.S.J. Haygood was assigned to supply the ministry.  A retrospective article in the Holdenville Times of Dec. 14, 1906 indicates the church was organized in the spring of 1897 by Haygood three miles south of town. In the fall they moved into the town with eight members.  The church dedicated a building in May of 1906 under the leadership of Pastor Rev. E.L. Massey.  Records of the Methodist Episcopal Church (M.E.) indicate that Holdenville was a community that received one of its Church Extension program grants in 1898 (Clegg, pg. 57). At that time the work in Holdenville was considered part of the Okmulgee District (Our Brother in Red, March 23, 1898, pg. 6).

In 1899 the Methodist Episcopal Church (M.E.) in Holdenville was supplied by A.L. Cloud. Clegg and Oden does not list anyone by that name that early in the state, although a Henry Cloud is listed who enters the conference later.

In 1901 N.E. Bragg was the Presiding Elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and stationed at Holdenville was A.C. Pickens (Andrew Calhoun Pickens).  IN 1902, J.H. Glanville was stationed at Holdenville. In 1903, Rev. C.M. Coppedge was Presiding Elder and pastor was J.L. Bray.

C.M. Coppedge, whom Clegg and Oden called “one of the great Indian missionaries of the early days”, headed the Holdenville District. He had been earlier in 1892 the Presiding Elder of the "Canadian District."  This gives a hint that the region of the old "South Canadian" and "Canadian District" were part of the original Choctaw Nation Methodist work traceable back to 1844.  At that time the 1890's, the Holdenville District covered most of east central Oklahoma and the interpreter for the District was son of  a pioneer Methodist minister who would, in turn, be instrumental in so much of the church work in Indian Territory and early day Oklahoma, Rev. Johnson Tiger (Clegg, pg.65).

Had anyone wanted to assume that Holdenville had achieved the sober demeanor of an urban city of refinement and culture in those early years of the century, they had to look no further than one April day in 1904.  On that day an altercation broke out between two commercial painters, blows were exchanged, and then a .32-caliber handgun was brought into play.  As a result, John Tinkel had a bullet lodged perilously close to his heart and F.M. Skirvin was in the hands of U.S. Marshalls. Things may have calmed down a bit by November of 1904 when the M.E., S assigned to Holdenville Station Robert Hanson and to Holdenville Circuit Mark Wagnon (supply). The District was again overseen by Presiding Elder, C.M. Coppedge.

The summer before statehood, times were tense and challenging in the area around Holdenville during the sweltering heat of mid-July.  An African-American man, unknown to the community, was beaten severely at Wewoka just to the north of Holdenville.  The near fatal beating was the result of mob action surrounding at incident at the home of a local ice dealer Tom Rice and his wife. Alone at the home, two African-Americans approached the house for ice, received and then went away. One of them came back to the house.  There the stories diverge with the woman calling for help from neighbors because she was being beaten and the beaten man claiming he was trying to see an African American girl who worked for Mrs. Rice.  He was taken from the train he was attempting to board by a mob and nearly beaten to death before “cooler heads” could intervene.  As the result of this incident there was threat of a major race war as the African-American settlements banded together and local communities, such as Holdenville, armed to confront threat of violence.

In 1908, T.L. Mellen died during the singing of the second hymn sung one Sunday evening. As the conference committee of memoirs noted: ‘From the pulpit he was called to the presence of the Lord. In the very act of lifting up the cross, he received his crown.” (pg., Mitchell, 48?)

Oklahoma was one of the areas where some new thoughts made serious inroads in the early years.  As a new state the area was a magnet for union builders and breakers.  There were social activists, religious experimenters, and reformers of every ilk. Men in white sheets terrorized rural farmers, men with burning crosses and ropes terrorized African Americans and Native Americans. The area may have become a state but there was still a decidedly wild aspect to life in the region that no doubt called on every person of faith to find and act on the highest principles of Christian charity and love.

Just before the annual conference of 1912 a man labeled a socialist and insane killed himself in the Wewoka jail on September 23. He was reported to have been glad he killed an enemy and was happy to die an infidel. Barry Schrimpscher severely attacked a man, Dave Swihart, on the streets of Holdenville during a socialist meeting being held there. He was removed to the Wewoka jail by local sheriff C.R. Edmonds after there was open talk of lynching.  The jailed man wrote a rather rambling letter to family and then rolled off an upper bunk killing himself. Apparently, he tore up bed clothes, wrapped one piece around his neck and the other to the top of the cell. Then he tied his hands and feet together, pushed his feet through his hands, so they would not touch the floor, and then rolled out of the bunk hanging himself.

November 20, 1912 the 67^th Session of the East Oklahoma Conference of the M.E.S. convened at Holdenville, Bishop Warren A. Candler was presiding, (Mitchell, pg.50).  Candler would go on to head up Emory and Southern Methodist universities. This was his only time in Oklahoma as Bishop.

So it becomes obvious that, like much of the new state, these times were rough and rowdy years in Holdenville.  The community, like many of its neighbors, was struggling with opposing social tensions, contrary weather, unstable economics, and the work of trying to forge a community from a group of strangers.  Newspaper stories of those years show reports of threatened lynching’s, fights, disasters, hopes of booms and the despair of economic bust. 

Standing against these forces were often the simple prayers of people intervening with God on behalf of people, communities and futures. C.F. Mitchell, an early day minister of the state, shared a story of early Holdenville. It was recounted in the early work, From Teepees to Towers: The History of Methodism in Oklahoma (1936) compiled by Paul Mitchell.

“An upstairs law office in Holdenville became a veritable Upper Room when my father prayed there with three men… one of whom was R.M. McFarlin.” (pg. 141).

Robert M. McFarlin was an early oil and cattle man responsible, among several, with making Oklahoma an oil capital. He and his wife Ida Barnard moved from Norman, Oklahoma to a ranch near Holdenville in 1895. In 1903, he and his partner Chapman, formed the Holdenville Oil and Gas Company and worked the famous Glenpool Oil pool.

In 1926 the conference again convened in Holdenville. The 81^st session in 1926 was presided over by Bishop H.A. Boaz. (Mitchell)  Boaz headed the denomination’s work in Asia for many years.

Pastors

Year(s)	Name	M.E., South	M.E.
1897	A.S.J. Haygood	x
1898	S.M. Bryce (Supply)
1899	T.O. Shanks	x
1899	H.L. Cloud (Supply)		x
1900	T.O. Shanks	x
1901	A.C. Pickens
1902	J.H. Glanville
1903	J.L. Bray	x
1904	Robt Hodgson	x
1905	C.F. Mitchell	x
1906	E.L. Massey
1907	M.N. Powers		x
1907	T.L. Mellen (d1908)	x
1908
1909	Marvin Bell
1910	C.S. Walker	x
1910	A.G. Lockwood		x
1911	R.K. Triplett	x
1912	R.K. Triplett	x
1913	E.J. Campbell	x
1914	Luther Roberts		x
1915
1916	P.H. Aston	x
1917	P.H. Aston
1918	P.H. Aston
1919	S.H. Babcock
1920	S.H. Babcock
1921	S.H. Babcock
1922	J.E. McConnell	x
1923	R.A. Brighton		x
1924	J.C. Curry( 1882-1951)	x
1925
1926	Vanderpool
1927	Vanderpool
1928	H.E.Kelso d.1930	x
1929	H.E. Kelso
1930	Morehead
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935	S.H. Babcock	x
1935	Satterfield	x
1936	Salter
1937	Salter
1938	Salter
1939
1940
1941
1942	John A. Callon
1943
1944	C.L. Crippen

The First M.E., South Church building

Artist's rendering of the current version of the church