When the Spanish arrived in 1598 to colonize what became Nuevo Mexico, the Catholic missionaries who accompanied them began the monumental task of converting the peoples they encountered to their new religion. And when Americans began arriving in large numbers in the mid-1800s after invading and conquering what is now New Mexico in 1848, Protestant missionaries followed in their wake to evangelize the Native and Spanish-speaking peoples of their new territory.
Baptist and Methodist missionaries, representing two of the three largest Protestant denominations at the time, were the first to arrive in the early 1850s. They found a few willing converts, particularly as they began distributing bibles to a population unaccustomed to reading scripture on their own. But the white, English-speaking missionaries mostly encountered disinterest and even hostility from the newly conquered Nuevo Mexicanos. The Baptists soon quit the field.
The Presbyterians, however—the other of the three largest Protestant denominations at the time—began sending missionaries after the Civil War. They found considerable and lasting success for one crucial reason: they spoke Spanish.
The Taos County Historical Society’s monthly program on Saturday, August 3, will feature Virginia Dodier, co-chair of the TCHS Archives and Library Committee, who will explore this topic in her talk entitled, ” ‘Our Mexicans’: Nuevo Mexicanos. Presbyterian Missionaries in Northern New Mexico, Civil War to Statehood.”
The talk will focus on the lives of Hispano clergy and evangelists, including José Yñéz Perea, Gabino Rendón, Vicente Ferrer Romero, and John Whitlock, who all founded Presbyterian churches. Their work, as well as that of teachers and evangelists, and the construction of churches, schools, and hospitals, was funded by Presbyterian congregations across the U.S. through the Board of Home Missions. Though the Hispanic people of New Mexico were fellow Americans, the mission organizers back east thought of them as “Our Mexicans.”
The legacy of the missions of 150 years ago is evident in the many Presbyterian churches in towns and villages throughout northern New Mexico. As Taoseña Carmen Lieurance says, the Presbyterian missionaries left a church structure “like the bones of a strong skeleton.”
Ms. Dodier is a museum professional, archivist, librarian, and published author. She holds degrees in fine art, art history, and library and archives science. She retired to Taos in 2018, where several of her ancestors were born. One of the subjects of her talk, the Rev. John M. Whitlock, was the grandfather of her grandfather, John Whitlock Hernandez.
The talk begins at 2 p.m. at the Kit Carson Electric Coop boardroom, 118 Cruz Alta in Taos. Admission is free for TCHS members, $5 for non-members.
Contact: Michael Wilson, (612) 743-6546
