The Methodist preacher and teacher George Key had just arrived from the Weston Community in 1858, and with the help of Rev. A.C. McDougal another Methodist circuit rider were instrumental in the beginning of Methodism in Onega.

The Baptist group moved to the newly named town of Aubrey in the 1880's and constructed the wooden frame building on Magnolia street. The group grew and moved into the wooden frame building (and it still stands on Main street.)

During the year that he Methodist families began at the Key Settlement School log cabin in 1858, they found the area in a similar situation as other communities that were feeling the economic pressures being applied from the northern states. The tension was building as this neighborhood of new families were searching for a safe place to settle.

The famous politician and former governor of Texas, Sam Houston, spent a number of his early years with a Cherokee lady and learned the language and spoke fluently, and was a friend to the tribe for many years. One of our local Cherokees has explained to me that the Cherokee common wife was a daughter to the then Texas Tribe Chief.

Houston was a very eloquent and diplomatic man, he could even make his enemies feel comfortable and at ease as he was planning his politics for the young State of Texas. He was 65 years old when the Onega Methodists were organizing their local services. At about the time that the Onega group was organizing into a worshiping body, the Civil War was about to break loose. Texas only had 27,000 men between the ages of 16 and 60 years of age that were able to be enlisted in the Civil War services for the Confederacy.

In April 1861, J.W. Throckmorton was commissioned to a Brigadier General. He was a very congenial and diplomatic statesman and warrior. He later became Governor of Texas. Throckmorton possessed a farm in the now Collin County area. The Reverend George Key was the organizing officer of the local Onega Methodist church had previously resided in Weston, the small Collin county town, which is only about twenty miles east of Onega – on what they referred to as the East Prairie.

Our local Onegans during this period of the 1850's and 1860's and the Civil War era were just simply very much a defeated people to be thinking about fighting a civil War for a strange Yankee that had required them to be removed from their homes just a few years earlier. There were very few slaves in the Onega region and the Cherokee’s families that lived here had begun to make this their home; they had established crops. They found that there were too many obstacles in their way and had decided to establish a simple lively hood by joining in the church and becoming a friendly productive tribe.

It obviously was a very unique plan, and we wonder why couldn’t the entire country develop with the Onega example which was being set by the peoples and becoming in the community a much accepted standard as the local townspeople were searching for a better and rewarding life after being forced from their homes and fine agriculture. The local tribe of worshiping people’s example was a simple life.

My friend Leon Milton and local Cherokee historian has told me many times of the interesting stories of an unbiased historical nature – stories about where the Native American people were just simply shot and left to decompose. I have had many good talks with Leon and how we can read the biased history of the wild west where the natives were shot and how their remains were left for the vultures. These land seeking killers would go out and hunt down the Indians and then come back for the regular worship service and no doubts pray how the Almighty had blessed them with such liquidation of savagery. Leon and I have discussed many times the unworthiness of some of the murdering human beings and how the murderers have prospered.

Leon Milton, a retired preacher and Cherokee historian says that a lot of our peoples in Onega are a spin off of the group of advancing Cherokees as they left East Texas back in the 1830 to 1850's, when many were forced from their homes by the politics of that period.

He says that he has distant relatives that still reside in the communities of Point and Lone Oak near the Hunt county villages. He has many historical and adventurous incidents that have happened over a century ago. He plans to share these events with us; they are very much a part of history that has not been documented. I am privileged each week to be able to spend a little time with the octogenarian and have found his facts worthy to pass on to you. I look forward to his comments each week as his lineage goes back to the beginning of the Onega period.

J.W. Throckmorton was a very worthy and able bodied General. He was very capable of handling any responsibility that the people of Texas asked him to accomplish. The old Governor was a man of the people of Texas and his tenure in office was brought to a close after the Civil War by the Northern Yankees’ military officers. I went to the Aubrey Library to search for information on J.W. Throckmorton found several pages in a book.

My grandfather Wood Goin was somewhat a local politician and I recall how he told me that this man would make visits to his home here in Onega to discuss politics and search for advice. I have in my possession Governor Throckmorton’s published report of his leaving the State of Texas by force from the Yankee Generals. This report is some 103 or more pages and I intend to share with you the results of this report. At the time this report was printed, there were only 150 copies made. I have made a copy of this report and I continually refer to it. It is full of statements and statistics that were vital to the northern military.