DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just gonna do it justice. Now, if you want to talk about someone who showed up early — before the republic, before the revolution, before most anybody had a notion that Texas would be anything other than a distant corner of Catholic New Spain — you want to talk about the Reverend William Stevenson. Born October 4, 1768.
Died March 5, 1857. And in between those two dates, he packed in more miles and more meaning than most men ever dream of. Stevenson was a circuit rider.
That's the old Methodist model — no permanent pulpit, just a preacher on horseback, moving through the frontier, carrying the word wherever the road would take him. He rode for the Missouri Conference of the Methodist Church, and if you know anything about Missouri Conference territory in the early 1800s, you know it was not exactly a comfortable beat. But here's where the story turns.
In 1815, Stevenson made a pastoral trip. Not just any trip — a trip south, to a place called Pecan Point. That's on the Texas side of the Red River.
And out there at Pecan Point lived a man named Claiborne Wright, a member of a newly-arrived Anglo-American colony that had settled in on what was then part of Catholic New Spain. Now, think about that for a second. This is 1815.
Texas belongs to New Spain. The official faith is Catholic. And here comes a Methodist circuit rider, dusty from the road, knockin' around Pecan Point, gathering Wright and his friends together — and preaching.
Records indicate that those sermons, delivered to Claiborne Wright and friends in 1815, were the first Protestant sermons ever given in Texas. The first. Ever.
Stevenson was also, the marker tells us, a friend of Stephen F. Austin — father of Texas himself. So this was a man who moved in consequential company, at a consequential moment, in a place that was right on the edge of two worlds.
The marker calls what he did at Pecan Point a beachhead for religious freedom in Texas — a point of entry. And when you consider what Texas would eventually become, and how much of its identity would be bound up in that freedom, well — that's not a small thing to have started. A circuit rider from Missouri, a man named Wright, a settlement on the Red River, and one 1815 Sunday that neither of them could have known would echo the way it did.
Some beachheads are stormed. This one was preached.
What the marker says
(October 4, 1768 - March 5, 1857) Frontier minister; friend of Stephen F. Austin, father of Texas. A circuit rider in Missouri Conference, Methodist Church, Mr. Stevenson in 1815 made a pastoral trip to Pecan Point, home of Claiborne Wright, member of newly-arrived Anglo-American colony on Texas side of the Red River. Records indicate that his preaching to Wright and friends in 1815 constituted the first Protestant sermons ever given in Texas, then part of Catholic "New Spain." He thus established a beachhead for religious freedom in Texas at this point of entry.