Gospel Tracks through Texas
The Mission of Chapel Car Good Will
978-1-58544-434-2 Cloth
6 x 9 x 0 in
240 pp. 26 b&w photos., 4 line art., Map.
Pub Date: 07/19/2005
Available
Author Wilma Rugh Taylor’s portrayal of this ministry for the car named Good Will, which served Texas, provides a view of life in towns such as Denison, Texline, Marshall, San Antonio, Laredo, Abilene, and Dalhart. Railroads that carried the Texas chapel car included the Texas & Pacific; the Missouri, Kansas & Topeka; the Southern Pacific; the International & Great Northern; and the Mexican International. She describes the car itself (its living area was just nine by eighteen feet with a decorative rococo stencil on the ceiling), missionary couples who traveled in it, and services that were held inside. She considers the philanthropists who supported the mobile chapel and the guilt and motives that moved them. She looks at the issues the chapel car faced as it rolled into town: temperance, turbulent religious rivalries, racism and immigration, the role of Masons and other lodges in rural society, and even the devastating Great Storm of 1900 in Galveston.
Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, sponsored by Texas A&M University-Commerce
About the Author
Praise
Published by Texas A&M University Press