The 2nd Church Building
1910 was a year of both joy and sorrow in the life of our church of 584 members. Under the leadership of the Rev. William T. Morrow (1908-10), the second church building, seating 1057 people, was completed at a cost of $36,700.
It was a large brick building at the corner of Tenth and Lamar Streets, the site of the present post office. The third parsonage had been completed at a cost of $3,095 on two small lots across the alley from the church on Tenth Street. Rev. Morrow had lost his wife and baby daughter in childbirth three years before, and in May of 1910, his 16-year-old daughter committed suicide. Following these tragedies, the pastor resigned and left town on August 10. The next day, our church was opened with a musical program performed by Mrs. James Cassidy on the organ and Clarence Magee on the violin. Then, on August 14, the congregation prayerfully marched as a body from the old church to this new second church building.
This new brick building, with its altar backing on the Lamar Street side, had a slanting floor to the front of the Sanctuary. Sunday School rooms were in the rear (by the current alley between our church and the post office). When the Sunday School rooms were opened into the 1057 seat auditorium, it could seat 1500 people. Beautiful stained glass windows were a part of the church, two of which are in the hall of the present church building between the elevator and the Heritage Room, after being a number of years in the Education Building.
To build this new church required much work and effort. In addition to the men soliciting pledges from the members, the women sponsored many fundraisers: hosted a Friday night program at the Princess Theatre; fed people oysters, biscuits, coffee, and pie at the opening of the Detroit Jewell Range dealership; held a spelling bee; and had a cake sale. Meanwhile the Epworth League members each contributed one day’s labor. The Sunday School classes also pitched in holding benefit socials and a Valentine auction and providing homemade ice cream and cake on the courthouse lawn. The old church and the parsonage were sold for $8,500.
Wichita Falls became a booming town with the discovery of oil. This contributed to our church having the largest membership of any church in the North Texas Conference in 1916 with 1121 members.
Sunday Schools had been largely nonexistent until after Reconstruction, although Bishop Asbury had established the first Sunday School class in 1786 in Hanover County, Virginia. Sunday Schools were for children only until after 1900. But this was changing for our church. In 1910, our church had 570 Sunday School members. The membership was doubled by 1917, and by 1922, there were 2595 members (much more than the 1036 church members) and 114 teachers. Sunday School was the most popular program in our church, and it was the third largest Methodist Sunday School in the state of Texas. It introduced graded course lessons, provided by the national Sunday School Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The Sunday School teachers worked hard to make the classes the best they could be. For example, Mr. J. R. Ogle earned 10 certificates for the annual training course for Sunday School workers.
Mrs. P. P. Langford was superintendent of the primary department from 1916 to 1930. In 1920, Mrs. Grover (Marion) Bullington began 53 years as superintendent of the Cradle Roll. As soon as a baby was born, Mrs. Bullington visited and enrolled the baby in the Cradle Roll (birth to two years). No doubt her work contributed to the growth of the Sunday School. The Beginners Department (pre-school) of which the Cradle Roll was a part had so outgrown its place in the basement of the Annex that they were allowed to move into new quarters in the basement of the third church building before the building was completed. From May 28 to June 15, 1923, daily Vacation Bible School was held for the first time and was to become an annual event.
Before 1910, Sunday School classes were known by numbers instead of by names. There was a Class #12 for young ladies, and the class for young men (number unknown) probably became the Baraca Class. The Wesley Class was organized in 1913. Although founded earlier and taught by L. H. Mathis, the Men’s Bible Class became known as the Kay Bible Class in 1914, when John A. Kay became the teacher, a job he held for twenty years. The class met in the downtown theatres, first the Olympic Theatre and then the Strand Theatre.
The Epworth League continued to grow and was even larger than the entire Sunday School, although it had suffered during World War I, and the membership was still down in 1925. A highlight came in June of 1924, when J. W. Thorne presided at the annual assembly of the North Texas Conference of Epworth Leagues, held in Sherman, Texas. Thorne was president of the Conference League for two years.
One of the programs of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South was to establish mission Sunday Schools. In 1893, Texas Townsite Company conveyed to our church a block of land on the north side of Wichita Falls. This became the site of Our Church Across the River. Our pastor O. T. Cooper preached over there in 1911, and members of our church were holding Sunday School there at 10 A.M. Meanwhile the building was repaired and our church paid $200 a year on Rev. Alexander’s salary. The property was sold in 1925.
Another mission church we had was the Factory Church at 3106 Buchanan Street. It was located in the old brick house, now torn down, immediately south of Stanley’s Barbecue. This property had been given to the northern Methodist Episcopal Church in 1912. Our church purchased it in 1918 and used it as a mission periodically between 1917 and 1925. The Call Field Hospital property was acquired in 1917 for the same mission purpose and disposed of in 1923.
Other missionary efforts were not neglected. In 1914, the Woman’s Missionary Society began 15 years of supporting Lillian Ida Bible women in Japan. Named after Mrs. Lillian Moore and Mrs. Ida Montgomery, each missionary was called “Lillian Ida Bible Woman.”
The first library, was established by the Baraca Class of young men for their use only. 1917 saw the establishment of a tiny library for the entire congregation; some books from it are in our current library. The revival in May of 1915 brought in 200 new members. In 1917, Brother McIntosh conducted the Annual Revival.
Revivals continued to be important in the life of our church all during the years in the second church building and were still annual events in 1959.
A pipe organ was installed in this second church. It is unclear how many organs we have had and when they were put in this church building, but there is a record of an organ being installed in 1914 and another in 1919, and we have had a paid organist since 1911 (go to Sanctuary Organ page for more about the organ).
In spite of the money problems, the early 1900’s were a time of firsts in hiring a paid staff. About 1911, Charlie Durland became our first paid organist; and in 1913, he hired Mrs. E. L. (Una) Fulton as our choir director. In November of 1915, Miss Jeanette Armfield was hired as our first paid secretary, and M. P. Hines, a local preacher, worked as an assistant for Pastor Allen Andrews. In 1919, J. D. Pinkston was assigned as our first ordained associate minister.
Efforts to raise money to pay off church debt are not unusual in the life of our church. The first time that we know about was a banquet held on December 19, 1913, to liquidate indebtedness. This was finally accomplished in 1920 under the prodding of our live wire Pastor H. D. Knickerbocker (1919-22). When Knickerbocker came here in 1919, our membership was 677. He received 1478 people in the three years he was here, but because of a mobile population during this oil boom era, the membership stood at 1036 when he left in 1922.
During this period of growth in the city on October 29, 1919, Floral Heights Methodist Church was organized with about 100 members from our First Church who mainly lived west of Brook Street.
In 1919, an annex to the church was built, and lots to the south in the same block as the church were acquired as meeting places for the Sunday School classes. By 1923, plans for a Sunday School and Recreation Building were being made, and talk of a third church building began.
| Read more of our history here: | ||||
| Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V |
The history pages above were written by Elizabeth Prothro and Kiyo Watanabe. It is our hope that these documents will help you to learn not only the church history but also how people of the church have put their enormous effort with faith into building this legacy of the church through the years. We also hope you will be as proud of being a part of our church’s legend as we are. These were also published as a book titled Building Our Legacy in December of 1999.