Mount Hope Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Used by Permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission
Submitted by : Gloria B. Mayfield
Coordinator: Dolores I. Bishop
The roots of the Mount Hope Cumberland Presbyterian Church reach back to about 1845, when frontier preacher, Sumner Bacon, who is credited with holding the first unrestricted camp meeting ever held in Texas, organized a Cumberland Presbyterian Church at Pleasant Hill in 1860, the Pleasant Hill property was sold to the Baptists, and two Cumberland Presbyterian congregations were organized, one at Old London and the other at Mount Hope on the Tyler-Henderson highway.
The Mount Hope Church grew out of a Sunday School class organized by a Miss Coates, (great aunt of Glenn Williams) in her home, which was on a plot near a creek northwest of the present Mount Hope Cemetery. With a charter membership of 12-14 and the already organized Evergreen Sunday School class, the Mount Hope Cumberland Presbyterian Church was organized in 1860 under the direction of Preacher Bacon. The Sunday School class was so named by its founder because it was strongly desired that the class would never die. The white frame sanctuary was located at the southeast corner of the present Mount Hope Cemetery. Preacher Kelley was the first minister.
The following is a direct quotation from a column written by Mrs. F.P. Redwine, reporter for the Mount Hope community to the Rusk County News in April 1909. (Clipping is courtesy of Margie Alexander Baker, great niece of Mrs. Redwine.)
“I wish to announce through your paper that the Mount Hope Cumberland Presbyterian Church will have their preaching service and singing at Miller School House on the fourth Sunday in May. We have had to give up our church to the Northern or U.S.A. Presbyterian church. While we have had to give up, our church still lives and will live as the world stands, for what Gid does, no man can undo. God instituted the Cumberland Presbyterian church and we expect to perpetuate it forever. We are undaunted. We expect to stand as firm as a stone wall. It has been said that we could not build another house, that we were too poor. The most of us are poor, but God’s promises are to the poor. He has promised to be with His children under any and all circumstances and by His help and that of our friends we expect to build again. On the day we gave it up we had a beautiful lot of four acres given to us. Mr. H.B. Studdard, Sr., and Mrs. J.T. McCord are the donors. It is situated one and one-quarter miles from Mount Hope, on the Henderson and Tyler road. Of course it is with sadness we part our church. It is sacred to us for many reasons. Some of us have gone there so long that we will not feel right for a good while to go anywhere else, but we must go, so it is goodbye to old Mount Hope with all of its sacred ties, so far as church connections are concerned. Our cemetery is at that place. In it rests the bodies of our fathers, mothers, companions and children, to await the great Resurrection. My little brother, Burrew Kelley, was the first one that was buried there. He was only seven years old when he died, but when he was dying he told mamma and papa to bury him at Mount Hope where his papa preached and his brothers and sisters went to school. I am fifty years old, and have belonged to and attended church at Mount Hope for forty years. So you see I have given nearly all my life to the service of God at that place. And I can truthfully say I have not been an idler in my Master’s vineyard, but I do not feel like my work is lost, neither the work of the whole church. God has that recorded in heaven. He has already paid me here on earth for what I have done by making me happy and by saving my relatives and friends. I will also say that I was the one that began raising money to build the new house at this place, and that I raised more than anyone else, but it is gone so far as we are concerned. Now I will say to all our friends, if you are interested in us, and want to help us, any amount that you will give us will be thankfully received... Mrs. F.P. Redwine (1909)”
This was relating the events concerning the church moving to the present location. The following was written to the editor one year later by Mrs. Redwine:
A little over a year ago I wrote a piece to you paper announcing to the public that we had to give up our church house to the U.S.A. Presbyterian church or enter a lawsuit with them, but that we were undaunted and expect to stand as firm as a stone wall, and that by the help of God and our friends, we would build again, We have built, and our new house is an honor to any church and community. I wish to thank everyone who contributed to our building in any way, may God’s richest blessing rest upon each of them. May they realize that is more blessed to give than to receive. Some who helped us are out of Christ, my earnest prayer is that the help they have given us may help lead them to the God we Cumberland Presbyterians love and worship. We have been greatly blessed. The people that helped us seem to do it so willingly. I do believe that the money and labor that was put in our church house was really and truly free will offerings. The eighth of May was a great say with us. It was on that day that we dedicated our church house with all its belongings to God. There was a large crowd present. The crowd was estimated at 1,000 or 1,200. There was plenty of dinner on the ground to feed the crowd. Reverend J.D. Potts, of Austin, Texas, who had been our pastor for three years before his removal to Austin, preached the dedicatory sermon. It was pronounced by a great many to have been a masterly effort, and by some that were well qualified to judge to be the best they ever heard on an occasion of the kind. Reverend G.F. Harris, our present pastor, delivered the charge to the session and church. It was indeed a great day with us, for God was with us. He greatly manifested Himself unto us. We had some fine singing in the early afternoon by the different leading singers of our county, among them our own George Hardy. At 3:30 o’clock we had a fine children’s service, and the Lord’s supper at night.
Unaware of an event that was to take place two miles northwest of the church in 1930, this sanctuary served the Mount Hope congregation until 1934. After Dad Joiner’s Bradford No. 3, the discovery well of what was to be the largest oilfield in the world, blew in on October 3,1930, a vast human tide of workers and their families engulfed the little village of Cyril, swelling its population to some 2,000 people. Cyril became Joinerville and a “boomtown” overnight.
The workers came in Ford V-8’s with running boards and roadsters piled high with tents, footlockers, pasteboard, suitcases and children. So many people crowded into the Mount Hope Church, that Sunday School classes had to be held outside under the trees or in whatever facilities the church could acquire.
In 1933, the young Haskell Miller became pastor of Mount Hope, and the Sunday School swelled to 300 strong. In 1934, with $200 in the building fund, someone donated a nearby stand of pines. Brother Miller found an abandoned, broken down one-man sawmill, and he and Bill McGraw, a building contractor who was active in the church, went to work on the sanctuary. Mr. McGraw had recently finished building the Carlisle Methodist Church sanctuary, and with these same plans, he and Brother Miller and other church members built the present Mount Hope sanctuary for $6500. Brother Miller found the beautiful windows stored in a gristmill near Dallas and bought all of them for the present sanctuary for $50. The Mount Hope Church sponsored the local Boy Scout Troop, and built the Scout hut across Highway 64 at about the same time the church was built. The log cabin also served as Sunday School classrooms and fellowship hall until the present fellowship hall was built in the late 1940’s. A brick manse was built when M.F. Allen was pastor.
It seems that history repeats itself, and the Mount Hope Cumberland Presbyterian Church has come full circle. Although not forced to move from their location as the early congregation was, it seemed that Mount Hope was on the wane, with some 20-25 members in the late 1980’s.
As usual, the “boom-near-bust” era, which follows when an oilfield has been defined, leased and drilled, became evident in Joinerville. Although Rusk County was still the second ranked oil-producing county in the state in 1948, by the 1950’s the great exodus of rural Texans to the oilfield was over for the most part. In the late 1950’s, oil companies closed camps when automation in oil production put operations once monitored by members under control of electronic systems and workers who once had to live on the job left isolated leases and stations to live in town. Exploration for oil was slow in the 1960’s, and the hard, dirty, grueling oilfield work had sent many young people to cities like Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and other fast growing Texas cities. The giant pines were reclaiming the lands and where hundreds of houses stood in the decades of the 1930’s and 1940’s; only patches of grass, which surrounded the houses, were evident in the 1980’s.
However, in November of 1989, the few remaining Mount Hope Cumberland Presbyterians were undaunted and determined that they would “stand firm as a stone wall,” and that “By the help of God and their friends”, they would remain the church in that place. Paul Allen, out of a heart full of love for the church, returned as the pastor, and with his wife, Ann, they successfully helped build the membership again and to renovate the facilities. Like the Mount Hope people just past the turn of the century, this congregation “has been greatly blessed and wish God’s richest blessings to rest upon each one who has so willingly helped them with their prayers, money and labor”. It is, indeed another “great day for Mount Hope Cumberland Presbyterians, and God is greatly manifesting Himself unto Mount Hope.”
Local records are not complete, but it is known that some of the pastors who served Mount Hope were: Preacher Kelley, Irwin Tipps, Brother Browly, Brother Hodges, Frank Harris, Brother Norman, Earnest Davis, J.D. Potts, Brother Black, Brother Harbor, Brother Hyater, Brother Weir, Con Hayes, Brother Hornbeak, Brother Irby, Brother McClesky, Dr. Haskell Miller (1933-1937), J.F. Patterson, Arleigh Matlock, O.H. Gibson, F.H. Lafollette, J.P. Bright, L.C. Kerans, M.F. Allen, Paul Allen, Tom Ballard, William Jones, Dr. Sam Bedinger, and Lee Scott.
The Church Today
Minister: Paul H. Allen
Board of Elders: James Crook, Betty Pickering, Mary Ann (Hawthorne) Trimble, Blanche Maynard
Pianist: Mary Ann Trimble
Music Director; James crook
Treasurer: Anna Jean (Underdown) Holman
Custodians: Donnie and Kathy (Trimble) Havaty