A copy of a book from the library of Rev. L.H. Billings, founding pastor of the First Baptist Church, Fredericksburg, Texas, bears the signature of his father, W.C. Billings.  The book lacks the title page, but bears the running title: Church Manual, and is 180 pages in length.  It might well be a revised edition of Teasdale's "The Baptist church manual:
being a guide to the origin, structure, polity, principles, doctrines, discipline, and practices of regular Baptist churches."  This book bears textual evidence that it was published after 1867.

        The ownership inscription on the front fly-leaf reads:  W.C. Billings / Book May / the 1st 1884 / G.W. Van cleaves / Book / April 21 / 1883  (The rear free fly-leaf and paste down bear a primitive sketch of a walking figure, a half circle with an arrow through it, and repeats the signature of W.C.B. and the date.  This book is in the possession of H.W. Billings, the great-grandson of W.C.B., 1999)

        Gibson, father of William Carroll Billings, was first married to Mary Alcorn, the mother of W.C., but after her death in 1866 he married Americus Van Cleave in Gonzales Co., 12 Nov 1872.  (He had moved with his family from DeKalb Co., Tennessee, to Gonzales Co., Texas, in 1854.)  It can be speculated that G.W. Vancleave gave this Church Manual to W.C. when the family moved from Gonzales County to the Klein Branch of the Pedernales River, six miles south of Harper, Gillespie Co., in the spring of 1884.

        George Washington Van Cleave was married to W.C.'s sister, Malinda.