The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 18, July 1914 - April, 1915 Page: 292
438 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Southwestern Historical Quarterly
"Daddy Spraggins."-My duties as Chaplain to the Senate of
the First [Second] Congress of Texas had ceased upon the ad-
journment of that body, May, 1838.
I, then, set off to explore: First, to Galveston, where I had
landed some two months previously. Finding the little steamer
Correo bound for the mouth of the Brazos, I took free passage (as
I did on all steamers during my four years sojourn in the Repub-
lic). I spent a Sabbath at Velasco, preaching once in the school
house, the only place for public meetings in the village. I have oc-
casionally made mention of my being the only minister of the gospel
within a hundred miles of the coast from June to November of
1838. Sometimes I made one exception, viz., that of an old
"Hard-Shell," then generally known as "Daddy Spraggins." He
was from Old Virginia, by way of Mississippi, a cordial hater of
all missionaries and benevolent societies. He was living with
a son-in-law, who kept a hotel, at which I stayed two or three
days. When the old man found that I was not sent to Texas by
a missionary society, he could tolerate me and hear me preach on
the Sabbath. He was an old man of immense egotism. He en-
tertained me by the hour, telling me of dreams and remarkable
impulses in his experience and how he had in Mississippi put to
rout the Education and Temperance Societies, etc., which had got
into some of the Baptist Churches, by a single discourse from
the passage where Elisha has sent the young prophets to gather
vegetables for their dinner, and some gathered "wild gourds"
which poisoned the mess. The wild gourds were the benevolent
societies, which were poisoning the Church. That sermon, he
said, did the business as far as the Baptist Church in Mississippi
was concerned. It was said, that the wild young men would
occasionally get him to preach,-that, before preaching, they
would take him to, a saloon and treat him liberally, after which
he would become very lively, that the boys would clap hands and
applaud vigorously, greatly to the delight of the old man. He
was the only hard-shell preacher I met with in Texas. I heard
of Parker, the Two Seed Baptist, but never met with him.8Texas Presbyterian, IV, No. 22. July 18, 1879.
292
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 18, July 1914 - April, 1915, periodical, 1915; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101064/m1/298/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.