Miss Johnnie Curr died at the age of 66 years, having been born in Corpus Christi, reared in Corpus Christi, and died in the same house in which she had lived, 911 Mesquite Street. Miss Curr lived to see Corpus Christi rise from a tiny village without streets, without a water system, without a city hall, without a jail or “watchhouse,†without a tax system, without a system of public schools, without commodious church buildings, in fact, just a little country town with plenty of good neighbors.
Miss Curr was said to be the third or fourth oldest member of the Methodist church of this city, having become affiliated with the church in earliest childhood.
Miss Curr worshiped in the Methodist church which was the first religious organization in the little village. A Bro. Lafferty was in Corpus Christi as early as 1853. He organized a church having 23 members. He built a small adobe church on the spot where the present parsonage stands, the church having a capacity of about two hundred. From the old church records, the first person to be received into the church by ritual was Ed. Windrich, Jr. He was baptized June the 15th 1859, seventy-six years ago. Mrs. Mary Jane Lege, sister of Miss Johnnie Curr, was one of the charter members of the church.
For a long time this little church was the only church in this section, and all Protestants met for worship there. Big meetings were held to which the entire community, Protestants, or other worshipers were invited. Big dinners were brought, and the day was spent in prayer and praise. Churches were not the dwelling places of gloom, as is sometimes found in modern edifices for religious worship. The members had their joys, their loves, and their common pleasures. The congregation found the church a social center in which neighbor could visit with neighbor, and in which the homely duties of daily living could be unfolded to sympathetic tears.
These followers of the “lowly Nazarene†labored in the Lord’s vineyard in this desolate land of early days, with savage foes without, and the usual controversies within, but all stood steadfast in their faith in an ever-present spiritual help in time of trouble.
Nature had much to do in fixing the love of their Creator in their devout minds. What a thrill of joy they must have felt in viewing the changing moods of beautiful Corpus Christi Bay! What dreams they had of the day, not too far distant, when beautiful streets, lined with noble buildings and spacious churches, with steeples and towers, “like a frozen prayer†pointing up to God, would supplant the little adobe church of that long ago!
We who live in this city of their dreams, with its growing prosperity and acknowledged culture are the beneficiaries of all those like-minded as the subject of our sketch, reaping where they sowed, and the harvest is far from being completely garnered. These and many more reasons might be given for the undertaking of the Pathfinders Column and the history or rather biography of these founders of the Republic of Texas a century ago, as well as all their descendants who were also pioneers before 1861.
Miss Curr and her compatriots had learned to set their feet “Upon the great world’s alter stairs, that slope through darkness up to God.†---- Ref. Times, Nov. 7, 1935.
Source:
De Garmo, Mrs. Frank. Pathfinders of Texas, 1836-1846. Austin: Press of Von Boeckmann
Jones, Co., 1951.
Transcription by: Rosa G. Gonzales