Volunteers, church members work to preserve 123-year-old Willis church building
NEWS
Volunteers, church members work to preserve 123-year-old Willis church building
Sondra Hernandez, Staff writer
Dec. 30, 2022
The Montgomery County Historical Commission is awaiting grant money to continue its restoration project on the Thomas Chapel United Methodist Church in Willis. The church, founded in 1867 and older than the city itself, was leveled in September 2021 to save foundation and the overall structure.
As a young girl, Cynthia Stubblefield would carry around a tattered little notebook writing down any tidbits of family history she could glean from her grandmother Janie Marie Westmoreland Stubblefield who lived in Willis.
“Everything is oral for us. They’d always tease me because I wanted to know about the ‘old’ people,” Stubblefield said.
A historian and genealogist, Stubblefield has given talks in Montgomery County on the difficulty of tracking family records in the Black community.
When Stubblefield’s family would visit her grandparents, she took every chance she had to pepper her father’s mother with questions about the family history, trying to piece her line together. “It wasn’t a situation like ‘Sit down and tell me the family history, it wasn’t like that,’” she said. “It was more like, ‘Now where were your mother and father married and what year?”
As she put together her family history, her family line also runs parallel to the history of the Thomas Chapel United Methodist Church in Willis — which is believed to be the oldest continually used church building in Montgomery County. The structure was built in 1899 and is located at Waverly and Holland streets in Willis.
Her family has been affiliated with the church for many generations and now Stubblefield and her cousin, Lorenzo Westmoreland, are helping to preserve the historic church building and bring its congregation of 25 back together for in-person church services there.
Westmoreland is the president of the Thomas Chapel UMC Trustees which also includes Carrie Hamilton and Ernestine Luke. This group was established this year.
Stubblefield is a spokesperson for the Thomas Chapel UMC Restoration and Revitalization Committee which is working with the nonprofit Montgomery County History Taskforce to make repairs to the building.
The cousins attended services in the church as children and have fond memories of the Easter programs that took place when they were young. Stubblefield would sit on the front row with her grandmother as Westmoreland and his brothers would give their memorized lines in the Easter play.
According to a narrative of the church, the congregation existed before there was a city of Willis. The congregation was organized in 1867. Pastor Enoch Jefferson was the first pastor and the original name was Thomas Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church.
Westmoreland and Stubblefield are both descendants of Warren Culpeper, the father of the two Culpeper brothers named on the cornerstone of Thomas Chapel. Warren Culpepper was born in Texas in 1859 and worked in slavery at the Greenwood Plantation at Danville until he was freed.
Stubblefield said many of the original church families came from the Greenwood Plantation or the Danville area. Families like the Powell's, Culpeper's, Westmoreland's, Pollard's, the Bass family, the Golden's, the Johnson's, the Caldwell's, the Reece family and others all have a long history with the church.
In August 1899, when the current Thomas Chapel building was being constructed, a cornerstone was laid and includes the builders P. Culpeper, J. Blain, and R. Jones, Builder. The trustees of the church at that time were N. Lewis, N. Woodson, and L. Culpeper. The pastor at the time the church was built was Edward Lee.
The taskforce is currently researching to find descendants of these men who may still live in the Willis area.
In 2001, the building was designated a state historic landmark and a Texas historical marker was placed on the property. Church member Nancy Jackson, who is now deceased, led this effort. In 2004, the church applied for a grant to have some restoration projects done but were unable to raise the matching funds for the work.
As the pandemic struck in March 2020, the small congregation began meeting on Zoom and still continues to meet virtually as work continues on the building.
In the fall of 2021, two members of the Montgomery County Historical Commission who were aware of the threat to this landmark building began to plan for Phase I of its restoration, the repair and leveling of the building’s foundation. With a contribution from a private donor who was a member of the Montgomery County Historical Commission, the Heritage Museum of Conroe sponsored the leveling of the building and was reimbursed with funding from the Montgomery County Historical Commission.
In July, work resumed on the building to restore plumbing, provide handicap access, install lattice to secure the foundation of the building, and repair air conditioning ducts in the building. Funding for this work came from private donors with some funding support from the Montgomery County Historic Commission. This work has recently been completed.
Volunteers also had the task of eradicating raccoons who had made the church a home and done damage in the walls. Ann Meador, a member of the history taskforce, said the next step is to replace the gas lines to the church to allow for heating in the facility. She doesn’t anticipate this project will take long as the funds are already secured. It is her hope that the congregation will be back in the church sometime in the new year.
The task force members are now planning for the next phase of restorations which includes repairing the roof and replacing water damaged areas on the front of the church. They are still seeking funding for this portion.
“The committee hopes that everyone in this area will follow the progress of this important effort on the new Friends of Thomas Chapel Facebook page. The church is not only a historic landmark, but it also held an important cultural place in the Black community. It should be restored and saved for future generations as part of the heritage of this area,” Stubblefield said.
For more about the project, contact the history taskforce at [email protected].
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Written By
Sondra Hernandez
