At the end of February, 1842, Caleb Ives, Episcopal priest of Christ Church Matagorda Texas, recorded in his journal yet another entry reflecting his deepest concern that his preaching of the gospel of Christ be blessed by God, leading to the salvation of his parishioners and to his own sanctification. His next entry, for March 3rd, simply commented on the prospect of a Mexican attack in south Texas, in response to reported communications from San Antonio and Gonzales. On this date and others in his journal, he discounted the likelihood of a full-fledged conflict with Mexico. Of course, we know that war between Mexico and the U.S. erupted in 1846.
Ives’ journal, which he kept from 1842 through the middle of 1848, is rich with first-hand detail of life on the coast of Texas, beginning in the latter years of the Republic, continuing into early statehood. The journal reflects what we today would consider mostly ordinary things—his priestly duties and his concerns for his flock, his family, goings-on in his town-country-state, his travels relating to his work, and most importantly, his private reflections on life. All of this is complicated by the time in which he lived. Even though Matagorda was a thriving coastal town by the time Ives’ accepted a call to go there in 1838, it was indeed the frontier of early Texas. All the things that many of us take for granted these days—modern transportation, access to life-saving medicines and healthcare, abundant worldly goods and conveniences that make our daily lives easier, infrastructure that enables us to flip on a light switch, fill up at the gas station, travel at illegal speeds because we are always in a hurry, mass communications that help us prepare for severe weather or even foreign invasion. The list could be longer, more discrete.
In no way is Ives’ journal an analysis of the times in which he lived. Yet his record is a wonderful snapshot of what captured his thoughts, day in and day out for over eight years. Over the last couple of days, I have been reminded of the richness of this snapshot as I’ve looked through the 95-page electronic file I created a few years ago by transcribing a Xerox copy of the Ives journal that resides in the national archives of the Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. In frontier times, ministers, like doctors, traveled to accomplish their work. They went to the people to preach, minister to the sick, to perform weddings and christenings. Traveling to the homes of Ives’ parishioners outside the town of Matagorda was necessarily by horseback or buggy over roads that were sometimes impassable, sleeping in a make-do camp when shelter wasn’t available, dealing with wild animals and people who would do you harm. Although Ives’ journal does not document any personal experiences with Indians, he does comment on reports of army conflict with the Comanches (March 28th, 1842). Doubtless, on his trips to Austin, the potential for an encounter with hostile Indians would certainly have been a possibility.
The journal records one reference to preaching at Gulf Prairie, where, according to the Handbook of Texas online, “Protestant services were held in a log cabin during the 1840s.” Visits to the plantation homes of people of means are mentioned several times in Ives’ record, as well as mention of persons of note. Gulf Prairie was settled by the Bryans, Perrys and Austins, and was the initial burial place of Stephen F. Austin, before his body was moved to the Texas State Cemetery in our state capitol, which was named for him. On April 2nd 1843, Emily Austin Bryan Perry, sister of Stephen and mother of William Joel Bryan (the namesake of Bryan, Texas), became a communicant at Christ Church Matagorda. “The weather was wet that day,” Ives commented, in closing his entry.
Caleb Ives, who along with his wife, Katherine, operated Matagorda Academy (1839), was a man of service. Serving as schoolmaster was a common means of earning income for frontier men of the cloth. “Begging tours” were a common means of gathering funds from the churched in settled areas for establishing churches on the frontier. Such a tour was conducted by Ives more than once, most specifically for building the first church at Matagorda after his arrival there in December of 1838. At this time, Texas was a “foreign country”, a mission outpost to the established church in the United States.
I’m sure Caleb Ives realized that he was breaking ground in Matagorda. He had already been instrumental in starting several Episcopal parishes in Alabama before coming to Texas in 1838. Yet his journal makes no dramatic claims relating to his life and work. He ministers, parents, blesses the newborn, performs Burial Rites, travels long distances under difficult but expected circumstances, grapples personally with the illnesses of his time. Malaria was common in the swampy, mosquito-infested coastal areas. Yellow Fever, which claimed many lives in Matagorda in the 1860s, was the cause of death of at least one parishioner recorded in the Ives journal, contracted on an “imprudent” business trip to New Orleans.
The last entry in Ives’ journal concerns the funeral he conducted for a Dr. Levy, who had died by his own hands after taking poison—this following an unfortunate attempted liaison with a Mrs. Herbert. Dr. Levy was married, but the journal doesn’t say if Mrs. Herbert was widowed or divorced. May 28th, 1848: “May what I said lead some to the wise step of beginning to prepare to die.” Comments on being prepared for death, especially in such uncertain life circumstances, is a thread running throughout the Ives journal. Little more than a year later, Ives himself would be dead. According to the Handbook of Texas online, he became ill in the spring of 1849 and went home to his native Vermont with the hope of regaining his health. Ives had documented in his journal a few instances of bilious remittent fever, a form of malaria. Perhaps this illness had something to do with his death. He died in Vermont on July 27, 1849, two months before his 51st birthday.
I remember the words of the Lutheran minister at my maternal grandmother’s funeral in September 1983. We actually buried our grandmothers one week apart—a September for the record books. “The words I have are for the living. The dead have no ears.” I don’t know whether Reverend Beltz had planned these words for my grandmother’s burial service. My mother and her brother, both who had been raised in the Lutheran tradition, but neither of whom had worshiped in the Lutheran Church in my recollection, apparently had forgotten Lutheran burial protocol. My mother especially wanted to have the casket open during the funeral, and asked me to go to the minister and make this request. Reverend Beltz denied the request, adding that if my mother and uncle wanted the casket open, they would have to find someone else to officiate at Grandma’s funeral. Clearly the salvation of those gathered to remember my grandmother was on the mind of Reverend Beltz that day, and such was the concern reflected by Caleb Ives throughout his journal. “I preached to the living, and not concerning the dead,” Ives recorded in his entry for February 13th, 1842.
Last Sunday the title of our young minister’s Lenten sermon was “God’s Last Hope,” and the subject of that sermon was, of course, on whose shoulders this hope falls. We need look no farther than ourselves. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11, KJV). The world in which we live, separated from Caleb Ives’ Texas by 166 years, really isn’t that much different. We’ve upgraded some, for sure, we have way more to distract us these days, but the journey remains the same.
Texas 1842—Normangee, Texas (March 4, 2008)
R. Harold Hollis
Ives’ journal, which he kept from 1842 through the middle of 1848, is rich with first-hand detail of life on the coast of Texas, beginning in the latter years of the Republic, continuing into early statehood. The journal reflects what we today would consider mostly ordinary things—his priestly duties and his concerns for his flock, his family, goings-on in his town-country-state, his travels relating to his work, and most importantly, his private reflections on life. All of this is complicated by the time in which he lived. Even though Matagorda was a thriving coastal town by the time Ives’ accepted a call to go there in 1838, it was indeed the frontier of early Texas. All the things that many of us take for granted these days—modern transportation, access to life-saving medicines and healthcare, abundant worldly goods and conveniences that make our daily lives easier, infrastructure that enables us to flip on a light switch, fill up at the gas station, travel at illegal speeds because we are always in a hurry, mass communications that help us prepare for severe weather or even foreign invasion. The list could be longer, more discrete.
In no way is Ives’ journal an analysis of the times in which he lived. Yet his record is a wonderful snapshot of what captured his thoughts, day in and day out for over eight years. Over the last couple of days, I have been reminded of the richness of this snapshot as I’ve looked through the 95-page electronic file I created a few years ago by transcribing a Xerox copy of the Ives journal that resides in the national archives of the Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. In frontier times, ministers, like doctors, traveled to accomplish their work. They went to the people to preach, minister to the sick, to perform weddings and christenings. Traveling to the homes of Ives’ parishioners outside the town of Matagorda was necessarily by horseback or buggy over roads that were sometimes impassable, sleeping in a make-do camp when shelter wasn’t available, dealing with wild animals and people who would do you harm. Although Ives’ journal does not document any personal experiences with Indians, he does comment on reports of army conflict with the Comanches (March 28th, 1842). Doubtless, on his trips to Austin, the potential for an encounter with hostile Indians would certainly have been a possibility.
The journal records one reference to preaching at Gulf Prairie, where, according to the Handbook of Texas online, “Protestant services were held in a log cabin during the 1840s.” Visits to the plantation homes of people of means are mentioned several times in Ives’ record, as well as mention of persons of note. Gulf Prairie was settled by the Bryans, Perrys and Austins, and was the initial burial place of Stephen F. Austin, before his body was moved to the Texas State Cemetery in our state capitol, which was named for him. On April 2nd 1843, Emily Austin Bryan Perry, sister of Stephen and mother of William Joel Bryan (the namesake of Bryan, Texas), became a communicant at Christ Church Matagorda. “The weather was wet that day,” Ives commented, in closing his entry.
Caleb Ives, who along with his wife, Katherine, operated Matagorda Academy (1839), was a man of service. Serving as schoolmaster was a common means of earning income for frontier men of the cloth. “Begging tours” were a common means of gathering funds from the churched in settled areas for establishing churches on the frontier. Such a tour was conducted by Ives more than once, most specifically for building the first church at Matagorda after his arrival there in December of 1838. At this time, Texas was a “foreign country”, a mission outpost to the established church in the United States.
I’m sure Caleb Ives realized that he was breaking ground in Matagorda. He had already been instrumental in starting several Episcopal parishes in Alabama before coming to Texas in 1838. Yet his journal makes no dramatic claims relating to his life and work. He ministers, parents, blesses the newborn, performs Burial Rites, travels long distances under difficult but expected circumstances, grapples personally with the illnesses of his time. Malaria was common in the swampy, mosquito-infested coastal areas. Yellow Fever, which claimed many lives in Matagorda in the 1860s, was the cause of death of at least one parishioner recorded in the Ives journal, contracted on an “imprudent” business trip to New Orleans.
The last entry in Ives’ journal concerns the funeral he conducted for a Dr. Levy, who had died by his own hands after taking poison—this following an unfortunate attempted liaison with a Mrs. Herbert. Dr. Levy was married, but the journal doesn’t say if Mrs. Herbert was widowed or divorced. May 28th, 1848: “May what I said lead some to the wise step of beginning to prepare to die.” Comments on being prepared for death, especially in such uncertain life circumstances, is a thread running throughout the Ives journal. Little more than a year later, Ives himself would be dead. According to the Handbook of Texas online, he became ill in the spring of 1849 and went home to his native Vermont with the hope of regaining his health. Ives had documented in his journal a few instances of bilious remittent fever, a form of malaria. Perhaps this illness had something to do with his death. He died in Vermont on July 27, 1849, two months before his 51st birthday.
I remember the words of the Lutheran minister at my maternal grandmother’s funeral in September 1983. We actually buried our grandmothers one week apart—a September for the record books. “The words I have are for the living. The dead have no ears.” I don’t know whether Reverend Beltz had planned these words for my grandmother’s burial service. My mother and her brother, both who had been raised in the Lutheran tradition, but neither of whom had worshiped in the Lutheran Church in my recollection, apparently had forgotten Lutheran burial protocol. My mother especially wanted to have the casket open during the funeral, and asked me to go to the minister and make this request. Reverend Beltz denied the request, adding that if my mother and uncle wanted the casket open, they would have to find someone else to officiate at Grandma’s funeral. Clearly the salvation of those gathered to remember my grandmother was on the mind of Reverend Beltz that day, and such was the concern reflected by Caleb Ives throughout his journal. “I preached to the living, and not concerning the dead,” Ives recorded in his entry for February 13th, 1842.
Last Sunday the title of our young minister’s Lenten sermon was “God’s Last Hope,” and the subject of that sermon was, of course, on whose shoulders this hope falls. We need look no farther than ourselves. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11, KJV). The world in which we live, separated from Caleb Ives’ Texas by 166 years, really isn’t that much different. We’ve upgraded some, for sure, we have way more to distract us these days, but the journey remains the same.
Texas 1842—Normangee, Texas (March 4, 2008)
R. Harold Hollis
3 comments:
Another wonderful post Harold, and a great history lesson as well.
I am filled with admiration for the simple man who contributes so much to the society in which he lives and does so in such a humble manner.
It is absolutely essential that we record our histories like Caleb Ives, however mundane they may seem at the time, for future generations to learn from!
With that said, please keep doing our own writing, you're so talented and I truly enjoy reading your posts.
Part One: Mary Belfield Webb married Dr. Peter Walter Herbert in 1833 in Key West, FL, lived Matagorda, TX, and became a widow in 1846. She married Henry L. Kinney (founder of Corpus Christi) in Christ Church Matagorda in 1850 but divorced him eight years later. She married Thompson Harrison, attended Trinity Episcopal in Galveston, died in 1866 and is buried in City Cemetery. Mary B. is the daughter of Judge James Webb and Rachel Elizabeth Lamar, second cousin of President Mirabeau B. Lamar, in whose cabinet the judge served. See Part Two.
Part Two: Caleb S. Ives is the uncle of my great-great grandmother, Esther Pratt Wright. I would like to find any references by Rev. Ives to my relatives. Is it possible that you would make your 95-page transcription available as an email attachment? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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