The Abolitionist’s Journal: Memories of an American Antislavery Family by James D. Richardson

Author:James D. Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNM Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

In January 1879, George set forth to do what he knew best—saddling up and heading out on the trail to visit Black Methodist churches of the Texas Hill Country. He purchased a team of two horses and a wagon, and filled his rig with books. If Black sharecroppers and their preachers couldn’t come to the school in Austin, he would bring the school to them.18

“My son used to call me the Traveling School,” George wrote. The books weren’t cheap—typically five dollars per volume. “I was not flush with money enough to furnish the books without pay,” so he also became a traveling bookstore. George ordered the books wholesale from a New York publisher, and then sold the books at a retail price on an installment plan. The profits went to the Austin school and a credit line with book publishers. Nonetheless, George still needed to loan funds to his pupils out of his own pocket so that they could purchase books.

George’s circuit was twelve hundred miles round-trip, taking him southwest to San Antonio, west to Fredericksburg, east to Mount Pleasant, and as far south as Corpus Christi. It was an enormous territory. Mostly he stayed with Black families. “I determined from the beginning to live with the people I served.”19

Reaching these outposts took ingenuity. For one such trip he purchased a horse, rode to a town on his circuit, and then sold the horse when he got home. “I sold him for what he cost me, making my trip cheaper than it would have been by railroad, provided it existed.”20

George’s journal reflects his enjoyment of the hospitality and the camaraderie with the African American preachers and congregations he visited. But he admitted he had a tin ear for their music. He much preferred the old Wesleyan Methodist chestnuts to the expressive lyrics and tones of African American gospel music. George could be downright condescending about it, writing that Black music didn’t reflect “the highest state of grace to which the Christian might attain.” Yet, in time, he grew enamored of the Black spirituals and recorded in the journal the lyrics of what he called the “plantation songs.”21

His hard-won experience as a Minnesota circuit-riding preacher had taught him to tread lightly before trying to change his congregations. It took a year for him to win their trust. “I could suggest some improvements in their Sunday Schools, in their class meetings and revival services that they would hardly have accepted the year before.”

George wrote glowingly in the journal about the Black preachers he encountered.22 Mack Henson, pastor of a congregation in Victoria, a settlement 125 miles south of Austin, was described by George as “eloquent.” Henson would become one of the leading voices for civil rights in the region of the late 1800s. Another pastor, A. R. Norris in San Antonio, deeply impressed George with his leadership abilities. “I think he came as near getting out of the ruts of the slavery times as any man on my District.” George saw to it that Norris would be appointed a presiding elder in Austin.

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