A Preacher of the Freewill Baptist Persuasion?

Allen Samuel: A Preacher of the Freewill Baptist Persuasion?

The Galveston Daily News, Tuesday, May 13, 1879, p. 3

(“Ultimo” means the previous month)

“…Rev. ______ Samuels, for many years a preacher of the freewill baptist persuasion in this county, died on the 26th ultimo, at his residence on Sandy Creek, aged 93…”[i]

An exquisitely brief death notice in The Galveston Daily News, May 1879, invites the question of early Freewill Baptist witness existing in Walker County, Texas. If the Rev. Samuels had been preaching Free Will Baptist doctrine “for many years” by the time of his death in 1879, it raises the possibility that Free Will Baptists here predated the known Texas Free Will Baptist organization for African-Americans in 1870 and Anglo-Americans in 1876.

Unable to identify any Free Will Baptist churches in this area with that kind of history,[ii] I turned to the identifying the minister, “Rev ? Samuels.” There is only one clear candidate to fill the bill for “Rev. Samuels” – Allen Samuel who, according to his grave marker, was born in 1797 in Maryland and died 1879 in Texas. The age is slightly off, but his approximate birth varies quite a bit based on the Federal Censuses.[iii] The death date is off by one day, comparing the newspaper and tombstone.[iv] It is highly unlikely that there was another “Rev. Samuels” in Walker County, especially two who died on day apart (the population was 12,024 in 1880). The Walker and Montgomery County censuses reveal no other person who would obviously fit the newspaper description.[v]

Assuming “Rev. Samuels” has been correctly identified, we proceed to his biography. Allen Samuel married Nancy S. Wells in Hot Spring County, Arkansas on February 25, 1837. They are found in the Walker County, Texas in 1850. Samuel was a Baptist minister while in Arkansas, having organized at least three Regular (not Free Will) Baptist churches there. He helped organize Spring Creek Church (now First Baptist Benton) in April 1836, and Mt. Bethel Church at Caddo Township in August 1836. He also organized Salem Church Jefferson Township in 1836, and was its first pastor. He was a member of Saline Church in Saline County.[vi]

After coming to Texas, Samuel organized the Mount Pleasant Church in Montgomery County in July 1838.[vii] It was the first Baptist church organized in that county.[viii] The church came into notice of Elder Daniel Parker in August 1840, and joined in fellowship with his Pilgrim Predestinarian Baptist Church and the Union Baptist Association[ix] until the Mount Pleasant church’s dissolution in 1844.[x]

Though Daniel Parker warned churches against Allen Samuel in an 1844 circular letter of the Union Association,[xi] Samuel is apparently reconciled and found as a messenger from the San Jacinto Church of Walker County to the Union Association in October 1855.[xii]

Apparently, a church named Union was organized after Mount Pleasant was dissolved, if we can trust Samuel Bryant’s memory in 1886. In July of that year he wrote a letter to The Gospel Messenger referring to events related to Elder Samuel that occurred before 1860.[xiii] “In about twelve months after I received a hope, there being no Primitive Baptist Church nearer than forty miles, I went and made my home with an Elder Allen Samuel, near a church called Union, of the Predestinarian order, belonging to the Union Association. To this church I related a part of what I have heretofore related, and was received. Soon after joining the Church I began to have many thoughts on preaching, which I decided were false impressions, which made me doubt that I had an experience of grace. In about a year after this I went to Arkansas and was married to Miss Sarah Jane Martin.”

Allen Samuel is still with the Primitive Baptists in 1865, when the Signs of the Times, and Doctrinal Advocate and Monitor, Volume 74, (p. 252) records “J. L. Tracy ordained on Nov. 25th, 1865, by Elders Allen Samuel and Jacob Dishonghn as a presbytery...”

From April 1836 to November 1865, Allen Samuel is identified with the Regular Baptists. Apart from finding evidence of Allen Samuel changing from Regular Baptist to Free Will Baptist after 1865 – or finding another “Rev. Samuels” in Montgomery and Walker counties, this statement in The Galveston Daily News must be dismissed as incorrect. Sometimes Free Will and Primitive Baptists are confused with one another, and sometimes “free grace” of Predestinarian Baptists is misunderstood as a different “free grace” of Free Will Baptists. Most likely, the newspaper correspondent got it wrong. Allen Samuel does not stand as evidence of early Freewill Baptists in Montgomery and Walker counties.

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[i] The Galveston Daily News, Vol. 38, No. 43, Ed. 1, Tuesday, May 13, 1879, Page 3; “Ultimo” means the previous month.

[ii] For example, Pine Prairie Free Will Baptist Church at Huntsville was founded by J. L. Bounds in 1912. “Pine Prairie Free Will Baptist Church brings new building to community,” in The Huntsville Item,  June 3, 2007 http://www.itemonline.com/news/local_news/pine-prairie-free-will-baptist-church-brings-new-building-to/article_4b5e9a86-2a8b-5855-96c0-15c7f8798588.html

[iii] Approximate birth year based on census: 1774 (1850), 1801 (1860), and 1791 (1870); birth location is Maryland, though 1870 is hard to read and may have something else.

[iv] The newspaper says he died on the 26th ultimo (last month, i.e. April), though the tombstone (which looks new) has April the 27th.

[v] Walker County was formed in 1846 from Montgomery County.

[vi] See “Saline County,” from Goodspeed’s History http://files.usgwarchives.net/ar/saline/history/goodsp1.txt ; “Michael Bozeman, Early Civic and Religious Leader of Clark County, AR,” http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/BOZEMAN/1998-07/0900554123-03; and “Judge Moses Moore: Building a Case for his Origins, Life, and Progeny,” by David A. Moore, http://damoore.tripod.com/bio1.html

[vii] “The Mount Pleasant Regular United Baptist Church of Christ was organized in Mount Pleasant, Montgomery County, Texas, on July 25, 1838. Allen Samuel was called as pastor.” From description of the Church Book, Mount Pleasant Regular United Baptist Church of Christ, MC076 at the San Jacinto Museum of History, Houston, Texas. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/sjmh/00076/sjmh-00076.html

[viii] A History of Montgomery County, Texas, by William Harley Gandy (Chapter VII, page 178) http://www.countygenweb.com/txmontgomery/gandy10_chapter_8.pdf

[ix] Union Association was organized by messengers from four churches – Pilgrim Church in Houston County (now Anderson County), Hopewell Church in Nacogdoches County, Mount Pleasant in Montgomery County, and Boggy Bayou Church in Caddo Parish, Louisiana.

[x] See the “The Records of an Early Texas Baptist Church, 1833-1847“ in The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 11, No. 2, October 1907, pp. 118-119.

[xi] Reprinted in The Baptist, April 12, 1845, p. 4

[xii] Notes on East Texas Associations, by Pauline Shirley Murrie, file at East Texas Research Center, Stephen F. Austin University.

[xiii] “Extracts from Letters,” The Gospel Messenger, April 1887, No. 4, Vol. 9, pp. 196-197. It is hard to date the time frame for Bryant’s contact with Elder Samuel, based on the excerpt from the letter alone. Son John was born in 1860, so his marriage to Sarah Jane Martin probably occurred in 1858 or 59.