Hill Country Living
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It’s a Wagner Week! There’s a Presbyterian vs Baptist building boom. A church-off, if you will. All this pastor asks of Jesse and Corrine is a new bell and their hands in marriage to men they’ve yet to meet. I edited out no less than 500 words of preaching of this letter, by the way.
February 21, 1896.
Ms. J & C Wagner,
I was up at your father’s yesterday afternoon found them as well as usual. Your Aunt Ella was reported as sitting up. Everything is about as usual in the town. Mr. Croom lost his oldest son, Jesse, last night. He was found dead in his bed this morning when his mother went to wake him. Supposed to have died in one of his epileptic convulsions. Funeral will be preached tomorrow at 11 AM.
Our church is moving on fairly well, I suppose, toward the erection of a new building. But in my judgment, it is going to prove a very troublesome talk which any pastor might dread. Heaven and earth will have to be stirred before we will build a structure honoring to the membership and town. Perhaps, if heaven were stirred more with humble prayers and supplication this would not be the case: for a praying people are always a liberal and self-denying people. I shall, however, encourage them to do liberal things for Him who has done so liberally for them, and if they fail, I hope no one will settle the sin my door. Designs for the new structure have been solicited, but are not yet in. Cannot, therefore, tell you the plan of the new church. We hope to begin rebuilding the 1st of April and ought to be well on towards a new church when you return to us. It will probably be two stories with more conveniences than the old house contained, for to build a one-story structure with same conveniences will cost us about $15,000 which we are hardly able to reach
We have nearly all the debris removed from the old site and will have about 18,000 bricks left to be sold, or, if suitable, to be used in the new building. My little Children’s Band has planned to buy a Communion Table and the Ladies H & For. Miss Society has begun a Church Furnishing fund. Others are working on other lines so that I hope we will have a nice church sometime this year. Can’t you girls beg enough of your mates and teachers to buy us an organ, or a Bell, or anything else you may decide?
The Baptist have also determined to build a new church, subscription papers are out. I understand that bro. Thornton, their pastor, is a regular beaver; and I hope he will succeed here as well as he has elsewhere. The C.P. Church will have a pastor in June, a Mr. Hogan, a young man of some 25 years and without a wife. Who knows but that the coming of this fine looking young man and the return of some lovely school girls home in the month of June may result in joint partnership of a lifetime! Such things do happen and it is not unpardonable to think they may happen. Would either of you like to marry a preacher? I cannot see how a preacher would resist from wooing either’s hand. Good and intelligent man deserve such wives.
Write me all about your school, studies and daily routine. I enjoy what other people do.
Yours truly, your pastor, B. H . Dupuy
