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THE "WATERDUCK
When some politicians retire, they become avid golfers or fishermen or
mething else. Some never really retire but keep their hands in politics, using their
fluence to continue to sway the course of human events. Others choose more prosaic
, es of endeavor.
Matt Gaines, the slave who became a senator, was the most outspoken and
=controversial Black member of the Texas Legislature during that period called
"Reconstruction". He was a firm advocate for those who he considered "his people ",
something like a nineteenth century Moses in the courts of Pharaoh. His people were the
Freedmen, those who, like him, had been slaves and had few advocates. When Northern
Radicals expected his political support because they had won the war, he contended that
his people had not become free just to become - the political slaves of someone else.
4 A When the issue of free public schools for all children i n the state appeared, he stood
firmly against segregation and the idea that separate schools could ever be equal. When
the large German community that had opposed both slavery and secession backed down
on issues of equality, he charged them with hypocrisy. In short, although most folks
haven't heard of him, he was, indeed, the first voice of the Civil Rights Movement that
would wait for another hundred years before it spread across the country. It is a shame
that, if he is remembered at all, it is because of a different side of his life.
Matt Gaines was a preacher. When he was ousted from the Texas Senate in the
1870's, he went back to his home in Burton near Giddings and resumed the life of a rural
preacher. He served, not one congregation, but several, making his way from community
to community on a mule. Sometimes, when no church building was available, he
''; preached in people's homes or in brush- covered arbors. Sometimes the services were
public and, sometimes, privately held. It was a time when Black services were often
disrupted by rowdies of both races. Generally, Preacher Gaines was respected, but never
more than when the weather was dry. You see, both Blacks and Whites, from Giddings
to Caldwell, to Brenham called him "The Waterduck ".
Now, I have looked in the dictionary and can't find "waterduck" either as one
word or two. There is a "waterfowl ", in one word that applies to "any bird that frequents
the water" and there is a "water bird ", in two words, that is simply defined with true
dictionary logic as "a waterfowl ". But, there is no "waterduck ". There are "ducks ", of
course, and ducks like water, but I don't think that people had in mind that Matthew
Gaines flew South for the Winter. So, its meaning must be outside that usually found in
dictionaries.
Agriculture depends on the rain. When there is a drought, not only do crops fail
but livestock suffer and, in extreme cases, springs, rivers and wells dry up. At these
times, and from his pulpit, Matt Gaines was a popular man. You see, he could "pray
down the rain ". That's how he got his name and that is also how he got one of his
churches.
When Matt Gaines held services in the Giddings area, he preached in
g p a brush
arbor. The Black community didn't have enough money to finance a building and, in the
summer, a brush arbor was cooler any way. But, in the winter, brush arbors lost their
appeal and a building was desirable. Now it was fairly well known in the Black
community that "Old Preacher Gaines" had a direct pipeline to the Almighty. The White
community didn't think much of that idea and often teased Matt for his belief.
Then came the drought of the 1880's. It lasted for several years and crops along
the Brazos, like those from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border suffered. Times were
hard anyhow and the loss of a crop to a tenant farmer was a sentence of another year of
hard labor for him and his family on land that he didn't own and could not control. Near
Giddings, a group of White farmers approached Preacher Gaines with a proposition. If
he would pray down the rain for them, they would build him a church.
Now, there are some things that I don't try too hard to explain. In history, you
often look at the result and then try to figure out how it happened. The offer was made.
Matt Gaines, the slave who became a senator and a preacher, took to his pulpit and
prayed for rain. The rains came in abundance in that area but not throughout the entire
area of the drought. St. Paul's Baptist Chapel was built by willing hands. Some folks in
the area still remember stories about "the waterduck ".