There are a number of events in history that go back to the late 1850s that precede the founding of Saint Andrew United Methodist Church in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. These are some of the accounts that lead up to the creation of not only Saint Andrew UMC but Tennison Memorial United Methodist Church as well.
The Tennison family in Mt. Pleasant goes back to the James Booker Tennison family. James Booker Tennison was born in Georgia in 1846 and was the son of Joshua Tennison. His father brought the family to Texas in the late 1850s before the Civil War. They settled east of Mt. Pleasant in the Union Hill Community. James Booker Tennison was known to his friends as “Booker” Tennison. Not too long after the Civil War started, he enlisted in the Confederate Army and participated in practically all of the battles in which the Army of Tennessee engaged. He was one of the youngest soldiers in the Confederate Army and was a survivor.
Following the Civil War, James Booker Tennison returned to Titus County, Texas, and began farming in the Union Hill Community. Shortly thereafter, he married Josephine Tabb. He was successful in farming and bought several hundred acres of land in the Union Hill Community. Around 1885, he moved with his family to Mt. Pleasant and went into the hardware business on the north side of the courthouse square. His two sons, Morgan and Booker, Jr. were in the business with him.
They later sold this hardware business and bought the telephone exchange in Mt. Pleasant which they operated for a few years. They then sold the telephone exchange and went back into the hardware business on the east side of the courthouse square. Morgan and Booker, Jr. pulled out of the hardware business and went into a metal manufacturing business. Morgan later moved his business to Texarkana and Booker, Jr. moved his to Houston. Both were very successful in the metal business and, in later years, became quite wealthy men. Some of the products produced by Booker, Jr.’s company were galvanized tubs and buckets. The wealth that these two men generated from these metal businesses is directly related to the money that was left to build both Tennison Memorial and Saint Andrew United Methodist Churches in Mt. Pleasant.
Not too long after the family moved from the Union Hill Community to Mt. Pleasant, James Booker Tennison built a home on North Jefferson Street which was occupied by his family until the time of the death of his daughter, Georgia, in 1961. There were four children born to the James Booker Tennison family: Morgan, Booker, Jr., Georgia (who never married) and Bell (who married Dr. Samuel Broadstreet). Dr. Sam and Bell Broadstreet had one daughter, Margaret, who married John Henry Mullins.
The Tennison family was always very closely associated with the Methodist Church in Mt. Pleasant but did not always agree where the church should be located. According to Mr. J.A. Davis, a deceased plumber and resident of Mt. Pleasant and also a charter member of Saint Andrew, the original Methodist church in Mt. Pleasant was located in what is now the downtown business area until it burned in 1899.
The congregation then became very sharply divided, with a portion wanting the church to remain on the west side of town while the other group wanted to move to the east side of the railroad. Those favoring the west side location were J.A. Davis, John Grissom and Georgia Tennison. Those favoring the east side of the railroad were Tate Vaughn, Dr. Tom Fleming, F.W. Fitzpatrick, Joe Hayes, Booker, Jr. and Morgan Tennison. It seems that father and mother Tennison were somewhat neutral in the battle for the location of the church.
At any rate, when the smoke of the first battle cleared, the Methodists had selected the west side of the railroad in the downtown area on the corner of Madison and Third Streets. However, the “eastsiders” were not easily discouraged and it came to the point that a vote was taken by the congregation practically every Sunday to determine where the church would be built. Mr. Davis says that his group of “westsiders” almost always won the vote but were at a disadvantage in that they were the financially poor element of the congregation. Those who favored the east side of town were the more affluent members. Mr. Davis says that one morning they woke up to see the “eastsiders” were building a church at the present location of Tennison Memorial. The “westsiders” realized they had been outwitted, gave up and joined the “eastsiders”. At this time, Morgan and Booker, Jr. made a gift of $15,000 to build the church, so the church was named for the Tennison family.
However, their sister, Georgia, never surrendered. In her will, she stated that she was giving a sum of money which was to be used for the sole purpose of building a new Methodist church in Mt. Pleasant. She set forth three conditions: 1) it must be located on the west side of the railroad tracks; 2) the new church must have a sanctuary with an entrance at ground level; and 3) the congregation must match one dollar for every eight dollars of her gift. This church was built on FM 1734 (now referred to as North Edwards Avenue) and is now Saint Andrew United Methodist Church — on the west side of the railroad tracks with a sanctuary with not one step up from ground level.
The backstory of the west side location and ground level requests go back to the latter days of Miss Georgia’s life. Often she became upset when she was late for church at Tennison Memorial because the trains blocked all the streets leading from her home to the church. Also, the church was built of an architectural design popular of that era — there was a half basement under the sanctuary requiring many steps to reach the the entrance which was flanked with magnificent columns and the sanctuary floor sloped down toward the pulpit area. In her golden years, she and others her age had great difficulty climbing the steps to attend church.
Shortly after her death, her will was probated and the details that she had outlined for the new church became public. Judge I.N. Williams of Texarkana and his wife, Jeffie, and a trust officer of the Houston Bank and Trust Company were the executors of the estate. They came to Mt. Pleasant to make the details of her will public and met with the trustees of Tennison Memorial in the rear of the old First National Bank building at the northeast corner of Jefferson and East Second Streets. I was a trustee at that time and recall the reading of the will.
The first impression was that this was to be a church built on the west side of the railroad with a ground level sanctuary to replace the present Tennison Memorial Church which was in need of considerable repairs at that time. The congregation would only have to provide one dollar for each eight dollars from her estate — a real windfall! A discussion followed about how the older church plant might be given to a new Methodist church. However, in a few days it became painfully apparent that this was not the way a new Methodist church is started….
The District Superintendent for the Texarkana District, Rev. Compton Riley, made it known that the only way a new church could be formed would be for the bishop to appoint a new pastor who would be sent into the area to generate a new congregation.
Rev. Mouzon Fletcher was pastor at Tennison Memorial at the time and he probably felt that he might be left with a dwindling congregation in an old building with badly needed repairs if most of his members went to the new church. Indeed, a few families from Tennison Memorial, seeing that a new church plant was going to be built, decided someone would have to form the new congregation and moved. About that same time, the Winfield and Marshall Springs churches were down to such low memberships that they were having difficulty in surviving. Several of their members also joined to help form the new church.
The first service of Saint Andrew was held on September 20, 1964, at the Seventh Day Adventist Church (909 West Ninth Street), their temporary meeting place. Dr. Compton Riley, the District Superintendent, brought the first sermon. Also taking part in this service was Judge and Mrs. I.N. Williams and the newly-appointed pastor, Harral Dunnam and his wife, Rita. Nine persons were received into membership at that first service.
The new church continued to grow as they met at the Seventh Day Adventist church building for several months. The nursery was held in the old Georgia Tennison home (612 N. Jefferson), a house that was later moved to 410 N. Lide Avenue. As the church grew and the need for more Sunday School facilities became apparent, the Badt home (406 W. First) located two blocks west of the courthouse square, was made available to the church and was used for nursery and Sunday School facilities. The present Saint Andrew Roundtable Sunday School Class met around the dining table on the Badt House and this is the source of the class name. Dr. Russell Martin, Jr. was the first teacher.
Charter Day was observed on December 6, 1964, with 66 people as Charter Members. J.A. Davis, aged in his eighties, was the eldest charter member and Jeff Presley, aged 9, was the youngest. On this Sunday, the members present selected a nominating committee of five men. After their nominations were made, a quarterly conference was held to elect the new church’s first board of stewards and trustees. Tully Florey III, along with Harral Dunnam, did a great deal of research on a possible name for the church. Tully eloquently recommended that the church be named Saint Paul’s. And so it was — for one week. However, whenever it was learned that Mt. Pleasant already had a Saint Paul AME Church, the second choice, Saint Andrew, was selected. Saint Andrew was selected because he was known among the apostles as a fisherman and a common man. It was specifically stated that the church would be known as “Saint Andrew” and not “Saint Andrew’s” (with an apostrophe).
On Palm Sunday, April 11, 1965, the church Sunday School classes were officially started. One adult class met at the church while another met at the Badt House where they could share the teaching of the children’s classes which also met there. Other classes were held in the old Tennison home on North Jefferson Street.
For many frustrating months, the trustees and board met trying to determine just how much money remained to use for construction of the church plant. Since the church received half of Georgia Tennison’s estate (the other half went to the Texas Methodist Home in Waco), much coordinating and swapping of assets was necessary. Her estate consisted of everything from a rundown hotel on the north side of downtown Houston to an abandoned multi-storied Houston warehouse building in addition to small interests in South Arkansas oil-producing properties, farm real estate and cash. After many months of negotiation, a portion of the Tennison farm located east of town was sold to John B. Stephens, Jr. Much of the other real estate was traded to the Methodist Home for their half of the liquid assets as they were in no hurry for their funds.
The site location committee looked at many pieces of property and finally settled on the present location because, nearby, the new high school was just being completed at that time. Max Hightower was a member of the school board and encouraged the architects, Clutts and Parker, who had just finished the new high school facility, to present a proposal. Other architects, including local architect, Louis Gohmert, also made presentations. In the end, Clutts and Parker along with Gohmert’s designs reached the finale. The present design was selected because of the permanence of the massive concrete structure, the excellent acoustical design, the concept of the table and cross, as well as the break from conventional church design prevalent in 1965.
Those were trying times because it was a fairly even split over the plans presented by the two final architects. In the end, the present design was selected, bids were taken and construction finally got under way. The contractor was Gafford Brothers from Sherman, Texas. H.P. Narramore, who supplied the concrete for the construction, said that over a million pounds of concrete went into the massive concrete roof beams, columns and foundation.
Even though it was years before Georgia Tennison’s estate was finally settled, the total bequest from her estate was about $240,000, with the congregation building a parsonage for about $30,000 to meet the 1 to 8 ratio requirement set out in Miss Georgia’s will.
The original design very soon fell short in providing enough Sunday School space. During the late 1970s, when Reverend Clifford Lee was pastor, an extension of 4,300 additional square feet to the educational wing was completed. During that same period, Saint Andrew won the coveted Kenneth Copeland Evangelism Award — awarded to only 12 churches in the entire Texas Conferences of 750 churches.
From a document dated September 12, 1988 entitled
“A History Of Saint Andrew United Methodist Church: The First Twenty-Five Years, 1964 – 1989”
Randy Presley was chairman of the original Saint Andrew building committee and
gleaned much of the information about the early history of the Tennison family from a book on the history of Titus County by Traylor Russell.
By the early 2000’s it was more than clear that the church’s fellowship space was woefully inadequate. During the tenure of Reverend Eric Ryburn, a large fellowship hall with a commercial kitchen, large restrooms with showers and significant storage space was added to the church. This addition was completed and was dedicated in 2005. With a successful capital campaign up front and a significant commitment by the church membership over the next few years, the church paid for this addition and was debt free within five years.
Yet, this isn’t the end of Saint Andrew History. Many events have taken place of note. One such event was the combining with a Spanish speaking congregation and began services in both English and Spanish. Next, Saint Andrew survived through a pandemic and a change in denomination focus to become what you see today–a welcoming congregation to all those who enter. Come learn and follow Jesus here at Saint Andrew Global Methodist Church.