Fleeing U.S. for Texas

In its early days, Texas (the Mexican state and the Republic of Texas nation) was a place of escape for some folks fleeing the United States who wanted to leave their past behind. Some availed of the opportunity and made new lives. Others could not or did not outrun their past.

The missionary Baptists had three notorious “bandits” who escaped the law in the United States by fleeing to Mexican Texas: Thomas Washington Cox, Peter Eldridge, and David Lewis. Z. N. Morrell suggests the same for Robert G. Green, of a more anti-missionary flavor. At least Green apparently wound up derelict, as far as Morrell knew.[i]

Cox helped found the first Baptist Association in Texas, then flew the Baptist coop to the Campbellite Restoration movement – finally, quitting preaching altogether.[ii] Eldridge adopted apostasy and open communion, probably destroying several churches in the Sabine and San Augustine counties region.[iii] His violations were egregious to the point that associations discussed the propriety of churches even receiving members who were baptized by Eldridge – but eventually he made a happy reconciliation with the Southern Baptists.[iv] Lewis failed in Indian missions and helped split the Sabine Baptist Association, before moving on to be a state missionary for the Baptist State Convention of Texas. He then disappeared to who knows where.

For most, other than historians and genealogists, these names are long unnoticed and forgotten. Nevertheless, they are integral parts of the founding of the Baptist churches in the state of Texas.

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[i] Green arrived Texas in 1838, and helped organize two or three churches. He was soon overtaken by “John Barleycorn,” as Morrell puts it. Flowers and Fruits from the Wilderness, Z. N. Morrell, pp. 200-201.

[ii] Rev. T. W. Cox in A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Alabama, Hosea Holcombe, pp. 71, 148-149, 232, 254. See also, “Texas Baptists, Their Beginnings” in the Jacksboro Gazette, Thursday, November 19, 1908, p. 2.

[iii] In July of 1847, Campbellite minister William DeFee wrote the The Millennial Harbinger that we “had a meeting twelve days ago, in Sabine county, with brother Peter Eldridge and G. W. Slaughter, Baptist preachers, on union and creeds, and agreed to unite on ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism for remission of sins.’” (Series III, Vol. IV, A. Campbell and W. K. Pendleton, Bethany, VA: Printed by A. Campbell, 1847.) Slaughter went on to become an extremely popular minister in the Baptist State Convention of Texas. Eldridge and Slaughter clearly headed toward the Campbellite position, but apparently drew back at the last.

[iv] The Tennessee Baptist, Saturday, December 2, 1854, p. 4.