USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 14
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 14
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* Dunwoody's Memoir.
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Wilmington, N. C., where he was carefully trained as a merchant. The Methodists in Wilmington at that time were an humble and despised sect, and although his mother had been converted years previously, under the ministry of LeRoy Cole in Virginia, she had not been able to withstand the opposition she had met with, and was living out of the church. One day as he, a boy of sixteen, was passing by, he saw a group of people gath- ered under a tree. He drew near, and heard a colored man preaching .* This was probably Henry Evans. He was convicted under the plain man's preaching, and sought and obtained the pardon of his sins. He became an active and valuable member of the Church, and from being a class-leader was licensed to exhort. He was a successful merchant. A happy family was growing up around him, when an unexpected, and as he regarded it, an imperative call of Providence came to him to leave all and follow his Master in the work of the ministry. John McVean had been stationed in George- town; he seems to have been a good man, but would now and then be overcome by an old weakness for wine. While in Georgetown he fell, and. Joseph Travis came to John Howard with an earnest request that he would take his place.t He did so. The next year he entered the conference, and in it he died. He was, when he began to travel, about twenty-five years old. He was a man of very handsome person, of rather stout frame, florid complexion, clear blue eyes, and raven black hair. He was very fluent and earnest, and had a fine voice, and was a sweet singer ; an accomplished gen- tleman in manner, very earnest and energetic, he at
* His own memoranda. + Travis.
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once was very successful and popular. He rose rapidly in the conference, and after having been on one cir- cuit, and then in Charleston and Georgetown, he came to Georgia. IIe was eminently useful in Savannah; afterwards he was in Augusta, where the same success attended him. IIe then returned to South Carolina, where, after having been stationed for three years, he located, and taught school in Charleston. IIe removed to Georgia and re-entered the conference in 1828. In 1830 he removed to the young city of Macon, in which he remained till the time of his death in 1836. IIe was a man of fine business qualification, and was secre- tary of the Georgia Conference when he died. Twice he was a delegate to the general conference, and in the Cincinnati General Conference, the May before his death, made an impressive and effective speech against abolitionism.
Few men ever labored in South Carolina and Georgia who have left a better record. Ilis education, if not ad- vanced, was excellent as far as it went, and his English was pure and elegant. IIe was full of zeal and fire- one who knew how to move the hearts of men-a master of sacred song, and wherever he went the re- vival influence went with him. Savannah, Augusta, Greensboro, Washington, Milledgeville, and Macon, were specially indebted to him. IIe had entered the conference from the purest motives and at great per- sonal cost, as far as this world was concerned. Ile was much esteemed by all, and especially by the people of Macon, who erected a monument over his grave.
On the Sparta Circuit, with Thomas Samford, the minutes place Wm. Parks. IIe was afterwards well known under his full name of Wm. J. Parks. He was
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the son of Henry Parks, whom we have seen as one of the first converts to Methodism in Georgia.
He had been reared in the backwoods, and had no educational advantages save such as the old field-school gave. He gave in his short autobiography an ac- count of his first school. The teacher was an old drunk- ard. One day the boys turned him ont, and after they had beaten and tied him, and smeared him with mud, he surrendered, and gave the school a treat, which was a gallon of whiskey, which he drank with his schol- ars. He soon went as far as an old field-school would allow, and then went to the new Methodist school at Salem, to study grammar. Here he was licensed to preach.
A more unpolished country lad has rarely appeared before a quarterly conference for license to preach. His skin was as dark as an Indian's, and his hair as straight. His manners were simple and unpretending, and when he joined the conference, he had known but little of life, save what he had seen in the quiet settle- . ment in which he had been reared. He was twenty- three, and already married. IIis wife was in every way suited to him, and much of his usefulness and success was owing to the sterling character and deep piety of his good Naomi. He was sent to the Sparta Circuit, a long way from his up-country home. Thomas Samford was his senior preacher. The Sparta Circuit at that time included in its boundaries some of the best lands in the State, and many of the people in it were rich and aristocratic. He says but little of his first year ; but his second, when alone among a people who knew him and could value him, was a yearof triumph. Of his work here on the Gwinnett Mission, our history will tell. He
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labored on, improving every day, making his power more and more felt. After travelling for three years, receiving scarcely any pay, he located, that he might better prepare himself to work for nothing, and then returned to the conference. He was made a presiding elder, and soon evinced a remarkable fitness for the place. IIc early won his position of leader on the con- ference floor, and never lost it as long as he was dis- posed to hold it. For two years he was a missionary, for fourteen presiding elder ; for four he was stationed ; he was a circuit preacher for twelve, and an agent for ten .* Win. J. Parks was in every respect a remarkable man. Ile was natively endowed with a brain of large size and remarkable balance; he had no crotchets. Ilis preaching was always clear as sunshine, and oftentimes as cheering. ITis striking and homely illustrations, his strong logic, his excellent diction, his genuine fervor, all united to make him a most entertaining and profit- able preacher. He called a spade a spade, and, while not disposed to controversy, was not afraid of it. Ilis conrage was of the finest type, whether it was to main- tain an unpopular side in conference debate, to admin- ister rebuke, or to endure hardships, he was brave enough for all. In perfect knowledge of Methodist Jaw, in skill in debate, he had no superior. If defeated, he never lost his good humor, but fell in heartily with all the measures that were adopted. IIe never became a querulous old man-was bright and cheerful to the last. He was simple as simplicity, and always plain in speech and dress. Despising shams, he never failed to ex- pose them ; loving the good and the true, he never failed
. His own MSS.
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to uphold it. He was thrice married, and few men have been so blessed in married life. He died in great peace, in Oxford, Georgia, in December, 1873, a few days be- fore the meeting of the Georgia Conference, having just entered his seventy-fourth year.
Isaac Smith having been chosen to superintend the newly established Creek Mission, Samuel K. Hodges was appointed to the Athens District. Allen Turner was made presiding elder on the Oconee. On the Ohoopee Circuit, which included Emanuel, Bullock, and Bryan Counties, two young men were placed-Thomas L. Wynn and Peyton L. Wade. Thomas L. Wynn was the father of Rev. Alexander M. Wynn, who has been so long a time a useful member of the Georgia Confer- ence, and to him we are indebted for the following sketch of his excellent father. Thomas L. Wynn was also the brother-in-law of Bishop Andrew, having mar- ried a daughter of Alexander McFarlane, of Charleston.
Thomas L. Wynn was the son of Samuel and Eliza- beth Wynn. IIe was born in Abbeville District, S. C., June 27, 1798. Through the instructions and example of his pious parents, he was in early life the subject of divine awakenings and convictions, and when thirteen years old was most happily converted to God ; but from the influence of thoughtless company he afterwards lost his first love, and was for several years in a lukewarm state. It is somewhat remarkable that even prior to his early conversion he was impressed with the belief that he would become a preacher, which impression doubt- less contributed largely in restraining him from all evil and immoral practices, especially during the years of his lukewarmness and loss of living faith. His child- hood and youth were passed without blemish and above
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reproach. In the autumn of 1815 he was restored fully to the divine favor and became ever henceforth a seri- ous, determined, and most zealous Christian. His im- pression that he would be called to the ministry was now ripened into a deep and settled conviction ; but, under perplexities not unusual to persons in similar circumstances, as well as on account of his youth, he for some time took no direct steps in that direction.
Finally he yielded to his conviction, formed his pur- pose, and gave himself to the work of God, and at the close of 1817 he was licensed to preach and recoin- mended as a candidate for admission into the South Carolina Conference.
Up to this period Mr. Wynn had enjoyed good health, but during his ardnous and zealous labors in Charleston his health began seriously to fail, and symptoms of the fell disease which finally cut short his useful life ap- peared. On the 19th November, 1823, he formed a most happy union in marriage with Miss Sarah Harriet McFarlane, fourth daughter of Alexander and Catharine McFarlane, of Charleston. His wife was the sister of Bishop Andrew's first wife and of Mrs. John Mood, each of whose husbands were then in the South Carolina Conference, and she was, indeed, in every way well qualified for an itinerant preacher's wife-amiable, intelligent, pure, pious, devoted to Christ and IIis cause, and also beautiful in person.
In 1824 he was stationed in the city of Savannah, Ga., and for 1825 in Wilmington, N. C. During both of these years he was more or less feeble, and with diffi- culty performed all his numerous duties, and at the close of 1825 received a superannuated relation for one year. Rest from constant labor and preaching, and
----
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judicions treatment, soon restored his health, and for 1827 he was stationed in Georgetown, S. C. This year a most violent attack of bilious fever brought him near to death. On the 7th of February of this year-1827- he was deprived by death of the companionship of his devoted wife, leaving him the charge of an infant son three weeks old, whom God spared, and he has now been twenty-five years a member of the Georgia Con- ference.
For 1828 he was stationed in Camden, where his health improved ; for 1829 he was appointed to the united towns of Washington and Lexington, in Georgia, where his health seemed fully restored. In 1830 he was again stationed in Charleston, S. C., but here his onerous duties soon told fatally on him, for in the spring he was attacked with hemorrhage of the lungs, attended with other alarming symptoms, and after suffering much, without prospect of speedy recovery, by advice he left for the up-country. Reaching Camden, he was pros- trated with another violent bilious fever, which pre- vented his going farther. This was succeeded by a most rapid consumption, of which he died on the 9th of October, 1830.
The exercises of his mind and the manifestations of the grace of God which he experienced during his last illness were peculiarly edifying. His pions widow (for early in 1829 he was married again, most happily, to Miss Sarah J. Cook, of Camden) says : " His illness seemed to have troubled his spirits ; and sometimes he was bowed down under manifold temptations. But again, God would dispel the cloud, and give him to rejoice. About ten days before his departure he was particularly blessed. 'Death,' said he, 'has lost his
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sting. Feeble nature has sometimes feared to meet the enemy, but it is all with God.' At another time he exclaimed, ' Heaven, what a delightful place ! How can you wish to be detained from it ?' About seven o'clock, the evening before he died, he requested me to bring his two dear little children to him, and as he embraced them he said, 'They will soon be fatherless ; ' then, with his eyes swimming with tears, and looking up to Heaven, he continued, ' Father of the fatherless, take care of my children !' Then giving them back to me, he said, ' I have given both them and you to God, and now I have nothing more to do but to wait the will of my Lord.' Dur- ing the night his kind physician said to him, ' Mr. Wynn, I think your end is drawing near.' He gave him in reply. an affectionate look, embraced him, and thanked him with great tenderness for all his attentions to him. After this he exclaimed, 'Glory to God ! Glory ! Hallelujah !' repeating the expression several times. IIe seemed to be slumbering most of the night, saying many things indis- tinctly, about 'angels,' ' the blessed,' etc. At one time I aroused him, saying ' I was afraid he did not lie easy.' IIe smilingly replied, ' I sleep so sweetly in Jesus.' Thus he seemed to slumber until half-past six in the morning, when he opened his eyes and looked affectionately on all around him, and then closed them until the resurrec- tion morning.'
In his Conference Memoir, published in the Minutes of 1831, it is said of him as follows: " Brother Wynn possessed extraordinary abilities as a preacher. From childhood he was studious and thoughtful; and, although his opportunities for acquiring knowledge in early life were, perhaps, rather limited than liberal, his after-hab- its were such as to render him respectable both for his
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literary and theological attainments. In this respect ho was a fine example of what a Methodist preacher can do to improve his mind, if he will be studious-though it must be acknowldeged that Brother Wynn possessed a capacity for improvement far above what is common, even among preachers. His perception was quick, his understanding strong, and his judgment well balanced. Ile loved to reason on a right subject, and he reasoned well. This gave a distinguishing character to his pulpit labors. They were sure to exhibit an able argument, as well as a warm application. As a preacher, altogether, he richly merited the high estimation in which he was held ; and what he was, by the grace of God, as a man and a Christian, let his death-bed speak. By his death the church has lost a son and a servant, much lamented and long to be remembered."
Peyton L. Wade was the colleague of Thomas L. Wynn. Ile travelled only a few years, and then married a very wealthy and a very excellent widow lady, and located. He was a fine business man, and his wealth greatly increased, so that at the time of his death, which did not take place for over forty years from this time, he was the wealthiest Methodist preacher in Georgia. IIe was a warm-hearted man to the last, and many a travelling preacher found in him a sympathizing friend.
Elijah Sinclair appears as on the Appling Circuit, which was, perhaps, the poorest and hardest circuit in the State. Sinclair, after years of great usefulness, became involved in speculation, met with disasters, and was expelled from the Church. Save that it is due to his memory to say that the charge was merely one of this character, we should have passed over this sad
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record in silence. He afterwards returned to the Church, was licensed again to preach, and died in peace. If our history has taught any lesson, it has taught to men in the ministry the great danger of devia- ting from the line of duty to engage in secular business, especially commercial life. Beverly Allen, Joseph Tarpley, Jno. Andrew, James Russell, Elijah Sinclair, Raleigh Green, all suffered much, and some fatally from this cause. There seems, too, to be a real fatality about trade to a preacher. Many have entered into it, and few of them have escaped bankruptcy and life-long distress.
On the Oconee District this year, under the efficient eldership of Allen Turner, there was considerable pros- perity. On the sand-hills in Emanuel, in Washington, at the camp-meeting in Twiggs, there were revivals. In Liberty County and in Wayne over 100 joined the Church. Thomas L. Wynn, says the presiding elder, kept unceasingly at work, hardly taking time to eat. The most distant circuit in the South was Saltilla and Amelia Island, and this was the date of the establish- ment of the Church at Fernandina. There was a small increase during the year. The total number of mem- bers reported at Savannah in 1823 was about 7,400 white members.
At this conference, 1822, Elijah Sinclair, as we have seen, was appointed to St. Mary's and Amelia Island. Amelia Island was the northernmost limit of the province of Florida. On the northern end of the island, within a few miles of Cumberland Island, in Georgia, and twelve miles from St. Mary's, was the town of Fernan- dina. The island was not thickly inhabited, but it had some commercial importance as the port of East Florida.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
During the war of 1812, it had been a depot for contra- band traders, and after the slave trade was abolished in the United States, cargoes of slaves were brought to this port, and many of them smuggled into Georgia. A few persons of English and Scotch descent had settled on the island, and some of them were engaged in plant- ing on a considerable scale. They were Protestants. Among them was Donald McDonnell, a Scotch High- lander, who had married first an English lady on the island, and then a lady of Savannah, of French and Huguenot lineage. A Mr. Seaton, of New York, had settled on the island as early as 1812, and thus Sinclair found a few sympathizers, as he, the first Protestant preacher who had entered Florida, came in 1822. Donald McDonnell was the early friend of the mis- sionaries, and at his house for many years there was a preaching-place. His son, the father of Rev. Geo. G. N. McDonnell, of the South Georgia Conference, was converted some few years after this on the main- land, under the ministry of Rev. John L. Jerry, and afterwards with his father and mother joined the Methodists, as there was no Presbyterian church in the section.
We may safely say that the first Protestant preaching in Florida was on Amelia Island, and was either done by Elijah Sinclair, or his predecessors on the St. Mary's Circuit.
Fernandina is now a promising and attractive little city, about a mile from the old Spanish town of that name, and the Protestant bodies are well represented in it.
The Ogeechee District was partly in South Carolina, and our old friend Joseph Travis was upon it. Washing-
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ton Town, although it had but fourteen members, was now considered strong enough for a station, and Thomas Darley was sent to it. For nearly thirty five years the Methodist preachers had been preaching regularly at Coke's Chapel, three miles from the village, and in the academy, and as the fruit of the toil there were fourteen members and no church building.
The members of the Church in the State, as the con- ference minutes report them, were fewer by 500. than they had been ten years before. Why was this? It was not emigration ; the new lands of Georgia were not yet open, and few had gone to Alabama or Mississippi. It was not because the fields had been abandoned, for the preachers had supplied the circuits despite the hard- ships of the work.
We can only conjecture the true answer to this ques- tion.
Several causes seem to have united to produce this effect. It was a time of great temporal prosperity. For- tunes were being rapidly made, and the love of money was eating up the Church. The invention of the cotton- gin in 1800, the closing of the slave trade in 1808, and the increased effort before that time to crowd the poor heathens into the market ; the new and very fertile lands purchased in 1804, which were now producing cotton most largely ; the invention of the steamboat, and the cheaper transportation of cotton from Angusta, which made that city the great cotton depot of Georgia, had all rendered the rapid securement of fortunes by farming not only a possibility, but almost a certainty. The church-member grew rich, and had nowhere to be- stow his goods. Ilis habits of economy and industry continued, he had no calls upon his benevolence, and as
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extravagance was not the fashion, he spent little, gave nothing away.
The circuits were very large. What was originally the result of the scarcity of men and the sparse popula- tion of the country, was now persisted in for the sake of economy. The circuit preacher only came every twenty-eight days, and then remained only part of one day. The support accorded to the preachers was entire- ly insufficient ; the people had been poor, and they could not believe they were not poor now. In the first days the preachers had only hoped to get a scant sum, enough it might be to clothe them, and now the wealthy member was unwilling to pay more. Thus the able and experienced men were driven out of the field by their inability to stay in it.
Pierce, Tarpley, Capel, Jenkins, had followed Hull ; Humphries and Ivy to the local sphere where they were needed most, in the itinerancy, and when they were in the ripeness of their power. Even those who remained were forced to have farms of their own, oftentimes very remote from their circuits. There was yet but two par- sonages in the State, one in Augusta and one in Savan- nah, and in these places the Church advanced. The ministry were not equal in culture to the demand, for, although the masses were not equal to the ministers, there were a large number of cultivated people in the State, who were far ahead of most of the preachers ; as yet there was not a single classical scholar, except Jos. Travis, among the preachers in Georgia. Then too there was great disaffection among some of the local preachers of prominence. The excitement which, a year or two later, culminated in the formation of the Methodist Protestant Church, was now arising.
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Everything moved on in the same old way. New churches were not built, only one new school had been established; no superannuated preachers were sup- ported. The circuits were of the same size, and the preachers pursued the same methods, of which we have spoken in our account of the Church in 1812. There was, as yet, no Sunday-schools of which we can find any account, save a few in the larger cities-one in Savannah and probably one in Augusta. Milledgeville having ceased to be a station, the first Sunday-school established there had no doubt died of neglect. The Church was torpid, but not dead. The camp-meetings and the quarterly meetings were still great occasions, and all Georgia was on the eve of the greatest revival it had ever known, and the Church was about to take an advanced position from which she has never been driven. This it will be the duty of the next chapter to tell.
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CHAPTER VIII. FROM 1823 TO THE FORMATION OF THE GEORGIA CONFER- ENCE IN 1830.
CONFERENCE OF 1823-WM. CAPERS AT MILLEDGEVILLE-MONROE MIS- SION-GEO. HULL-YELLOW RIVER MISSION-GWINNETT MISSION- CHATTAHOOCHEE MISSION-JOHN SLADE-INTRODUCTION OF METHO- DISM INTO FLORIDA-CONFERENCE OF 1824-TALLAHASSEE-TILMAN SNEAD-GENERAL CONFERENCE OF 1824-JOS. TRAVIS-CONFERENCE OF 1825-J. A. FEW-CONFERENCE OF 1827-NICHOLAS TALLEY- JOSHUA SOULE-JESSE BORING-GREAT REVIVAL-A. B. LONG- STREET-CONFERENCE OF 1838-JAMES DANNELLY-EATONTON- JOSIAH FLOURNOY-HENRY BRANHAM-JERE. NORMAN-STEPHEN OLIN-CHARLES HARDY-LA GRANGE-ROBERT FLOURNOY-CON- FERENCE OF 1829-MADISON-JAMES HUNTER-GENERAL REVIEW.
ALTHOUGH the State of Georgia, after the sale to the United States of all the territory which is now com- prised in the States of Alabama and Mississippi, nomi- nally included in her boundary all that now belongs to her, yet the Indian title to a large part of it was not extinguished. All the country west of the Ocmul- gee and north of the Chattahoochee was held by the Creeks and Cherokees. The country on the east side of the river was, for that time, thickly settled ; on the west, where there were thousands of acres of fertile land, the wild Indian had his hunting-grounds. A treaty was made by the United States with the Indians in 1818 and in 1819, and a part of this country was opened to the white settlers. This section, which was surveyed and laid out into lots of 2023 acres, in 1821, 10
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extended to the Flint River. In 1825 the remainder of the Creek land was purchased, and in 1838 the Cherokees were removed to the far West. The new lands were rapidly settled.
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