Founder of Methodist work in Mexico honored

Video Clip of event

Some 200 United Methodists from across the church honored the founder of Methodist mission work in Mexico Dec. 16 in Leesville.
They watched four bishops dedicate and anoint a bronze marker near the site where Alejo Hernandez was ordained Dec. 24, 1871, as a deacon in a forerunner of the Southwest Texas Conference.
Bishops participating in the dedication were Joel N. Martinez and Robert Schnase of The United Methodist Church and Raul Garcia de Ochoa and Joel Mora P. of the Methodist Church of Mexico.
Hernandez, then 31, was the first Mexican ordained by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He helped establish what became the Methodist Church of Mexico.
The “In Memoriam” marker honoring Hernandez’s ordination says it was dedicated by “the people of the Rio Grande and Southwest Texas Conferences.”
A brief service before the marker dedication commemorated the 135th anniversary of Hernandez’s ordination. Participants included representatives from six denominational agencies, several United Methodist-related institutions, and congregations from the Rio Grande and Southwest Texas conferences.
The crowd overflowed the former Leesville UMC, which closed in 1994. People stood around the front door, watched a video monitor in a wing attached to the sanctuary and listened from an adjacent open-air pavilion.
“When Bishop Enoch M. Marvin ordained Rev. Hernandez as a deacon on Christmas Eve in 1871, he could not know the fruit that would be born by the seed planted on that day,” said Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, in a letter read at the event.
“Although Rev. Hernandez’s life was brief, his appointment to the Mexican Mission in Corpus Christi was the beginning of ministry with Hispanic persons that has resulted in the evangelization of thousands of Hispanic persons, the ordination of hundreds of Hispanic pastors, the formation of the Rio Grande Conference and the election of a Hispanic bishop to officiate at this service today.”


Born in 1842 into a wealthy family, Hernandez had once studied for the priesthood. While in seminary, he rejected the Roman Catholic Church and joined the Mexican army in 1862 to fight invading French forces.
While serving in northern Mexico, Hernandez read a Protestant tract and became interested in Protestant Christianity. He went to Texas to find a Bible written in Spanish.
Later, at a Protestant service in Brownsville, Hernandez reported feeling his “heart strangely warmed”—even though he couldn’t understand the English ritual. He went away “weeping for joy.”
Hernandez met leaders of First Methodist Church in Corpus Christi in the summer of 1870. He began preaching and teaching among Spanish-speaking residents. He felt a call to ordained ministry.
The Rev. John Wesley DeVilbiss, presiding elder of the Corpus Christi District, presented Hernandez as a candidate for ministry to the West Texas Annual Conference session in December 1871. The meeting was in a settlement then called Leesburg at the site of the former Leesville UMC.
Hernandez was admitted to the conference on trial as a local pastor Dec. 20. The next day he was elected to deacon’s orders because of the work the bishop wanted him to do among Mexicans.
Bishop Marvin appointed Her-nandez pastor of the West Texas Conference’s Mexican Mission Dec. 25.
The West Texas Conference also asked the American Bible Society to provide Spanish Bibles and Sunday school materials for Hernandez’s ministry and declared the first Friday in April 1872 “a day of fasting and prayer for the success of the Mexican Mission.”
Hernandez served among Spanish-speaking people in Laredo, Corpus Christi and Rockport until 1874. Bishop John C. Keener then assigned him to lead a new congregation in Mexico City.
Keener ordained Hernandez an elder in Mexico City Feb. 8, 1874.
Hernandez led the Mexico City congregation for 18 months. A stroke then incapacitated him. He returned to Corpus Christi and died Sept. 27, 1875, at 33.
In an obituary in the Texas Christian Advocate, William Headon, a prominent member of First Methodist Church, Corpus Christi, wrote, “The church should erect a monument to mark the spot where now rests the body of the first Methodist missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.”
An official United Methodist historical marker does sit at Hernandez’s gravesite in Corpus Christi.