Nashville in the 1880s and Beyond

During her three years in Nashville, from 1886 to 1889, Meta Chestnutt witnessed the life of a rapidly-growing city. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1880, Nashville had a population of 43,350, making it the fortieth largest city in America. By 1890, the population had jumped to 76,168, an increase of 76% in just ten years. During that decade, Nashville moved from fortieth to thirty-eighth largest city in the nation, ahead of both Memphis (64,495) and Atlanta (65,533).[1] It was easily the biggest, most cosmopolitan place where Meta would ever live. And who were these new residents of Nashville? According to historian Don H. Doyle, they were 

country folk who arrived from Middle Tennessee and other parts of the South. Some were ex-slaves whose ties to the land and to their former masters had been sundered; others were white farmers pushed off the land and out of small towns by the strains of postwar agricultural readjustment. Mostly young and poor, they drifted into the strange new environment of the city, some to thrive on the opportunities it offered to ambitious newcomers, others to flounder in the absence of family, church, and community ties that had guided them in the country.[2]

The social upheaval that accompanies such rapid growth was tempered by the simultaneous growth of religious groups in Nashville. The federal religious census of 1890 counted more than 8,000 white Methodists in the city. In the same year, black Methodists numbered nearly 2,000. There were slightly more than 6,000 Baptists of various kinds, and 6,000 Roman Catholics. Presbyterians numbered more than 3,500. And, Nashville was home to 2,400 adherents of the Stone-Campbell Movement, members of Christian Churches and Churches of Christ.[3]

Notes

[1] U.S. Census Bureau, "Table 11. Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1880," accessed January 24, 2022, https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/1998/demo/pop-twps0027/tab11.txt; and "Table 12. Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1890," accessed January 24, 2022, https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/1998/demo/pop-twps0027/tab12.txt

[2] Don H. Doyle, Nashville in the New South, 1880-1930 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 121.

[3] Ibid., 123.

Christian Colleges and Disciple Division: Hereford and Lockney

To what degree were the Disciples of Christ distinguished from the Churches of Christ before the U.S. Census Bureau listed them separately beginning in 1906?

The historiography of two Christian colleges established in northwest Texas prior to the recognition of the split suggests that division predated the founding of these schools by a number of years. For example, in his 1955 book, The Story of Texas Schools, C. E. Evans identifies "Pan-Handle Christian College," sometimes called Hereford College, which began in 1902, as a Christian School, while Lockney Christian College, established in 1894, is listed as a Church of Christ School.[1]

Likewise, in his 2018 book, Higher Education in Texas, Charles R. Matthews, Chancellor Emeritus of the Texas State University System, places Hereford Christian College among schools established by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and Lockney Christian College among schools established by the Church of Christ.[2]

Although W. M. Stoker in his Pictorial History of Early Higher Education in the Texas Panhandle does not take up the history of the college at Lockney, he does refer to Hereford Christian College's affiliation with the Disciples of Christ.[3]

Scholars writing denominational history, as opposed to educational history, make exactly the same distinction. For example, in his book A History of Colleges Established and Controlled by Members of the Churches of Christ, M. Norvel Young discusses Lockney Christian College, but not the college at Hereford.[4] In the same way, History of the Churches of Christ in Texas, 1824-1950, by Stephen Eckstein Jr., provides information about Lockney Christian College, but does not mention Hereford Christian College.[5]

By the same token, in Religion on the Texas Frontier, Carter Boren, who traces the history of the Disciples in the Lone Star State, offers a section titled "Panhandle Christian College, 1902-1911," but says nothing of the college at Lockney.[6] Again, in his book The Disciples Colleges: A History, D. Duane Cummins includes a table listing "Church of Christ Colleges" in one column and "Disciples Colleges" in another. He places "Lockney College" in the Church of Christ column and "Hereford-Panhandle Christian College" in the Disciples column.[7]

Of course, it is possible for later sources to simply project into the past a division that did not exist at the earlier time in question. But in this case, the overall evidence suggests that these two Christian colleges were typical of a division that had existed for some time. Beginning in the late-nineteenth century, some leaders and historians of the Restoration Movement in America insisted that the Civil War did not result in immediate division. In fact, they said, the coherence of the Disciples movement was remarkable. But it is much more likely that the radical autonomy of the congregations in the movement made it more difficult for observers to perceive division. Along this line, as early as 1965, Restoration historian Bill Humble concluded:

The Civil War . . . so shattered the sense of brotherhood between northern and southern Christians that they could never again be called 'one people' in any meaningful sense.  . . . What had happened was that two threads of alienation--sectional bitterness and antagonistic understandings of the restoration principle--had become tangled together and had shattered the Christians' oneness.[8]

Notes

[1] C. E. Evans, The Story of Texas Schools (Austin, TX: Steck Company, 1955), 352, 355.

[2] Charles R. Matthews, Higher Education in Texas: Its Beginnings to 1970 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2018), 87-90, 295, 297.

[3] W. M. Stoker, A Pictorial History of Early Higher Education in the Texas Panhandle (Canyon, TX: West Texas State University, 1976), 16.

[4] M. Norvel Young, A History of Colleges Established and Controlled by Members of the Churches of Christ (Kansas City, MO: Old Paths Book Club, 1949), 148-52.

[5] Stephen Daniel Eckstein Jr., History of the Churches of Christ in Texas, 1824-1950 (Austin, TX: Firm Foundation Publishing House, 1963), 166, 170, 209, 217, and 310.

[6] Carter E. Boren, Religion on the Texas Frontier (San Antonio, TX: Naylor Company, 1968), 250-51.

[7] D. Duane Cummins, The Disciples Colleges: A History (St. Louis: CBP Press, 1987), 84.

[8] B. J. Humble, "The Influence of the Civil War," Restoration Quarterly 8 (Fourth Quarter 1965), 246. Along this line, see also Jonathan Franklin Woodall, "The Post-Termination Rhetoric of the American Restoration Movement," PhD diss., University of Memphis, 2014.