The Life Of Horace W. Busby
Horace Wooten Busby was born February 21, 1884 in Lawrence County, Tennessee. Around 1891 the family moved to Ellis County, Texas, settling near Waxahachie. His father was a carpenter and over a period of time, the family lived in several nearby communities, such as Ennis, Midlothian, Venus, and Mt. Peak. Horace attended North Texas State Teacher’s Normal, as it was then called, in Denton for two years. He received a teaching certificate and taught in a rural school in the area for one term.
About the time he was teaching that term of school, he became acquainted with May Wise, a daughter of an elder in the Mt. Peak church of Christ. They eloped on August 2, 1904, immediately traveling by train to Oklahoma where Horace had some relatives. One of his uncles was Tom Busby. Tom was a member of the church of Christ, along with the rest of his family. Horace and May visited often in the home of “Uncle Tom and Aunt Lizie” (a very capable Bible teacher), and they talked much about the Bible. Tom was a double cousin of the much loved and respected Joe S. Warlick and was a very capable preacher and debater. On this particular Sunday, Brother Warlick preached, and when he had finished his sermon, members of various denominations began to ask questions. He was able to answer every question with a “thus saith the Lord,” giving chapter and verse. This continued for much of the afternoon, and Horace, deeply impressed by the solid biblical foundation upon which Brother Warlick preached, was sympathetic to the plea to return to the original and simple pattern of the church in the New Testament. It was a time of soul-searching for him and he did much Bible study. One day Uncle Tom sensed that perhaps Horace was ready to obey the gospel and offered to get Brother Warlick if he wanted to be baptized. He agreed and Uncle Tom hitched up the team and went for Brother Henry Warlick, telling people along the way about the service to be held, and several attended. The “baptistry” would have been a creek or farm pond. A short service was held and the invitation given. Horace and May, together with a daughter of Uncle Tom, responded and were baptized into Christ. The date was November 4, 1904.
They lived on the farm with May’s parents, and Brother Busby farmed for the next few years and began to teach a Bible class in the church at Mt. Peak. Horace did much serious study for this class, often working until midnight, and the class grew and prospered.
Brother Busby’s first meeting came about in a rather unusual way. In August of 1908, Walter Witcher, a young preacher came to Mt. Peak for a meeting. Some of the young folk in the Bible class wanted to obey the gospel, but they wanted Horace to baptize them. At Brother Witcher’s suggestion, Horace preached one night and thirteen people, including a married man, were baptized. Brother Witcher then suggested that Horace was able to do the preaching and he left it with him. Following this, Horace was invited to conduct a meeting at a place called “Johnson’s Gin” near Venus, Texas, where twenty-seven people obeyed their Lord. Horace began to get many calls for other meetings.
By 1911, Brother Busby’s parents had moved to Lockney in West Texas, and in July of that year he went there for a meeting. Twenty-eight people were immersed into Christ, including his father and two sisters, Floy and Edna.
After leaving local work in 1920 Bro. Busby spent the rest of his life in gospel meeting work, conducting about twenty-four each year. (Meetings were from ten days to two weeks duration in those years.) He usually preached twice daily in the meetings, and often three times on Sunday. He often expressed the view that the day services were worth more to the church than the evening services, because he usually preached about daily Christian living at the morning hour.
Four words which characterized Bro. Busby’s sermons were Simplicity, Enthusiasm, Loyalty, Confidence. During his years preaching some 17,000 were baptized. What a soldier of the Cross!
In 1952, while preaching at Port Lavaca, Texas where he was in a meeting, Brother Busby suffered a stroke. He passed away on December 10, 1965. Funeral services were conducted by George Stephenson and J. Willard Morrow in the Southside Church of Christ in Fort Worth. One of the songs sung was, “There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood,” the great invitation song Bro. Busby had used for so many years. In February of 1967, his beloved widow, May, joined him in the better world. Their bodies sleep in the Laurel Land Cemetery in Ft. Worth. Because he lived, thousands will enjoy eternity in heaven.
Three children were born to Horace and May; their oldest son, Horace Jr. was a chief speechwriter to President Lyndon B. Johnson; his other son, Elden, was the Superintendent of Fort Worth Independent School District, and his daughter Willie Mae McClung was the wife of Leo McClung, an elder at Southside congregation in Fort Worth.
Some of those baptized by Bro. Busby were: Don Morris, Walter Adams, John Stevens, A. B. Morris, Guy Scruggs, and many more.