More Winn Parish and Payne History: Hudson Holiness Camp Meeting & College

The Hudson Camp Meeting started in 1899 on 40 acres donated by Rev. W.M.D. Garr and J.B. (Brax) Payne. W.M.D. Garr was a talented preacher, educator, successful businessman and the largest native, individual landowner in Winn Parish at that time. Brax OR Braxton Payne was one of the sons of Dr. I.B. Payne and Sarah Foster Kidd, and he was also a community leader and sawmill owner/operator. Other Payne brothers, such as Buddy, had a share, too, in helping build the camp meeting site (as described in an interview of Buddy in a July 24, 1966 article in the Monroe Morning World) .

The centennial 1952 issue of the Winn Parish Enterprise describes a visit to the Ebenezer Camp Meeting near Montgomery by Garr and Payne and their subsequent intention to create a tabernacle and camp meeting in their part of Winn Parish. During the early days of the Hudson Interdenominational Camp Meeting, people prepared tents and shelters on the camp meeting grounds in order to stay for all or part of the two weeks of the annual camp meeting. In later years and after improved transportation means, some people just came and left each day, while others stayed nearby in the Hudson Holiness College's dormitory rooms (that served as a hotel). The August 30, 1912 issue of the Dodson Times (p. 5) relates that Robert E. Young (brother-in-law of Buddy Payne) "will have charge of the hotel during the Hudson Camp Meeting now in progress at that place. He will also handle feed stuff and will be glad to serve all who need anything in his line." Camp meeting attendance was estimated at times to reach as high as 1500 people.

J.L. (Jim) Payne, brother of Brax and Buddy, was the camp meeting secretary for over twenty years, starting in 1915. He also wrote hymns and poems, such as "Beulah Heights," that was published in the Dodson Times on May 5, 1904. Payne in-laws, such as Morris Simmons and James Bonnette, later assumed this camp meeting secretary role. Buddy Payne made the trip south to Winnfield each year to visit business owners and collect donations to help fund the camp meeting. Even now, the old camp meeting continues through several Payne descendants filling leadership positions (Robert Leach and Patsy Sharp).

Major construction of the Louisiana Holiness College was not completed until about 1907. The publication, Legends and Legacies of Winn Parish (Vol. 1, Issue 4, 1998, p. 138), tells about construction in 1906 of one of the three-story buildings there with its 26 rooms, including offices, classrooms, music and recitation areas, as well as a dining hall. Faculty taught courses such as literacy, business, stenography, typewriting, music, and theology. Rail service linked this college and Dodson, and dormitory rooms at the college were available for students. The Louisiana Holiness College opened in 1906 as an expansion and enhancement of the earlier Hudson Training School and College (started in 1896 at that site). W.M.D. Gaar, a minister of the Protestant Methodist Church, was the president of the LHC, and he and his family and friends were able financially to give the college a good start.

The web site "The People's Story of the Southern Nazarene University" describes the LHC and other early colleges in the South that had Nazarene religious ties or support. Leaders in the LHC at Hudson appealed to the Nazarene Church for union with or adoption by the church to help meet its increasing financial needs after 1910 or so. "Garr came to realize ... that meeting the demands of maintaining the College single-handedly was impracticable. Also, most students from the hardscrabble area in north central Louisiana found it impossible to meet the small charges that were assessed. Failing to achieve Nazarene affiliation, and the help that was expected from it, the leaders came to the painful decision to close the school. Final closure came at the end of the 1912 academic year." The buildings on the LHC campus after it closed were used as temporary housing purposes for the camp meeting and for Sunday school classes.