Presiding elders and district superintendents, 1884–2006
A district's supervising officer is the one post whose occupancy is recorded every single year without exception. The list below runs from the creation of the Tyler District in 1884 to 2006, the point at which the surviving compilation ends. It is the most complete single sequence in this archive.
An independent archive. This site is a privately maintained heritage archive about Methodist history in the Tyler and East Texas area. It is not a district office, it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any denominational body, and it does not receive or answer correspondence on behalf of one. The Northwest District of the Texas Annual Conference maintains its own current pages at txcumc.org.
The office, and its change of name
Until 1939 the officer supervising a district was the presiding elder. He held quarterly conferences at every charge, examined accounts and candidates, and reported the district to the annual conference. The 1939 union of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Methodist Protestant Church replaced the title with district superintendent. The work was substantially the same; the name and the surrounding structure were not. The break in the table below is therefore a real one, and dating a document by which title it uses is a reliable rough test.
Presiding elders
| Years | Presiding elder |
|---|---|
| 1884–1887 | D. S. Finley |
| 1887–1888 | U. B. Phillips |
| 1888–1891 | John Adams |
| 1891–1899 | T. P. Smith |
| 1899–1903 | J. T. Smith |
| 1904–1907 | E. W. Solomon |
| 1908–1909 | Thomas H. Morris |
| 1910–1912 | C. B. Garrett |
| 1913–1914 | J. B. Turrentine |
| 1914–1917 | J. T. Smith |
| 1918–1921 | Jesse Lee |
| 1922–1923 | H. H. McCain |
| 1924–1925 | L. B. Elrod |
| 1925–1927 | W. F. Andres |
| 1928–1931 | H. C. Willis |
| 1932–1934 | W. F. Bryan |
| 1935–1937 | Joe Z. Tower |
| 1938–1944 | S. Stephen McKenney |
Two features of this list are worth remarking. J. T. Smith appears twice, separated by a decade — a second term of this kind was unusual but not unknown, and generally signals a district in some difficulty. And the tenures lengthen as the period goes on: two-year terms are common before the First World War, four- and six-year terms afterwards, reflecting a general settling of the itinerant system as travel became easier and charges became more stable.
District superintendents
| Years | District superintendent |
|---|---|
| 1945–1949 | Robert E. Goodrich |
| 1950–1955 | Frank M. Richardson |
| 1956–1959 | A. D. Lemons |
| 1960–1961 | Harry V. Rankin |
| 1962–1966 | Derwood Blackwell |
| 1967–1971 | Carlos Davis |
| 1972–1978 | Compton Riley |
| 1978–1982 | Conrad Winborn |
| 1982–1989 | Frank Richardson, Jr. |
| 1990–1998 | Lloyd Giles |
| 1999–2004 | Virgil “Jack” Cox |
| 2004–2006 | Richard Goodrich |
What the list does and does not tell you
The sequence is useful chiefly as a dating tool. Undated district correspondence, minutes, programmes and photographs can very often be placed within a few years by the name of the officer who signed or presided, and researchers working through a congregation's loose papers usually find this the fastest way in.
What the list cannot tell you is anything about the men themselves. This archive deliberately records nothing beyond name, office and years, because that is the whole of what the source supplies. No character, no biography, no achievement and no opinion has been attributed to any person here. Where a fuller account exists it will be in the conference journals, in obituaries printed in the conference minutes, and in denominational collections — see the resources page — and not in any secondary summary, including this one.
The compilation from which this list is drawn ends in 2006. Nothing after that date is recorded here, and this archive makes no statement about how the district has been led since. For anything current, go to the district's own present-day page.