USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 15
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 15
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At the conference which met in Savannah, Febru- ary 20, 1823, Bishop Roberts presiding, important advances were made in the Georgia work. Several new missions were established in the conference. This was the beginning of that wonderful work since done in the domestic field by the Missionary Board. The Missionary Society of the M. E. Church had been in existence but a short time, when this first appropria- tion was made to Georgia.
The corps of preachers in Georgia was a strong one. Milledgeville was again made a station, and Wm. Capers, in order that he might be near to the Creek Mission, was placed in the charge of it. Capers was now in the prime of his manhood, and his fame as a preacher and as a Christian gentleman was as wide as American Methodism. IIe did not confine himself to Milledgeville, but travelled much in the interests of the mission, and made his power felt throughout the State. Milledgeville, after having had separate existence as a station, had, since 1814, been an appointment in the Cedar Creek Circuit, and, of course, was worse off at the end of ten years in the circuit than it was when it was united with it. The establishment of a station, and the appointment of Dr. Capers to it, was a revival of its spirit. There was no parsonage, and during the first part of the year he left his family in South Carolina. Mrs. Clark, the Governor's wife, was a Methodist, and when the executive mansion was vacated for the sum- mer she requested her pastor to occupy it with his
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family. The next year a parsonage was secured, the third in the State .*
Dr. Capers came to the capital at a time when it was the centre of the most intense political excitement, and when the hope of doing anything for the Church was almost a. vain one. The political excitement in the times of Troup and Clark was exceedingly bitter; and inasmuch as men, not principles, were the objects of contest, a bitter personality entered into all the politi- cal controversies. Preachers as well as people were decided in sentiment, and they were popular or other- wise, according to their political complexion. Mercer, Danl. Duffy, Hodges, and many others were not only Troup men, but were openly avowed participants in the contest. Fortunately for Dr. Capers, he was from South Carolina, and alike the friend of Gov. Clark and of Gov. Troup, his successor; but still this intense state of feeling was unfavorable to his work. So, while he did wonderful preaching and much of it, preaching at the penitentiary at sunrise, at the church at eleven o'clock, at three P.M., and at night, there was no con- siderable addition to the membership during the year.t
Wm. Arnold returned now to the work, and was sent on the Cedar Creek Circuit. Arnold was one of the holiest and most lovable of men. He had no doubt greatly improved as a preacher since we last saw him, and was exceedingly popular and useful. Thomas Samford was on the Sparta Circuit, and Jno. B. Chap- pell on the Alcovi. Willey Warwick, who had travelled as early as 1804 in the bounds of the States of North and South Carolina, having now removed to Georgia,
* Life of Capers.
t Caper's Life and Minutes.
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re-entered the active work, and was sent on the Grove Circuit. George Hill took the Monroe Mission, Andrew Hammill the Yellow River, and Wm. J. Parks the Gwinnett.
The Athens District had not often before or since been supplied with stronger men.
Lovick Pierce, after a location since 1814, now re- turned where his heart had always been, to the travel- ling connection. IIis family were located in Greens- boro, where he had resided from the time of his loca- tion. He had not been idle, but had been hard at work preaching and cultivating the powers of his wonderful mind. Ile was now able to return to the work, and leaving his family for four-fifths of the time, he served again his old flock in Augusta. James O. Andrew was sent to Savannah. If matters had not improved in Georgia after this, it was not because she was unsupplied with able preachers.
As we have seen, the new purchase was now mapped out. Already had the local preachers been at work forming societies and waiting for the conference ap- pointed to come. The counties had not been settled a twelvemonth before the missionary was in them. George Hill was on the Monroe Mission. His mission included Monroe, a part of Bibb, Upson, Crawford, Pike and Butts counties. Although he came in 1823, and the appointment first appears, he was not the first travelling preacher in Monroe. Andrew Ilammill had been before him. IIe had been appointed to assist Isaac Sınith in es- tablishing the Creek Mission ; but for some cause, after going out to it, he had been released and returned to Georgia, and in the latter part of the year he had gone into Monroe to establish the Church there. John Wim-
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bish, a local preacher, afterwards in the conference, had been preaching in the county, and had organized some churches. Hammill established several, and had a church built near the present Mt. Zion. This church was the first in all probability in all the country now included in the territory of the mission. It was built the last of 1822 .*
The section to which Hill was sent, the then county of Monroe, which included the territory of a half-dozen counties now, was one of the first in the new purchase. It is still a good county, with a delightful climate and excellent people, but the lands are no longer what they once were. The Creek Indians, who lived on the west side of the river, kept the woods burned that they might have free access to the deer, and that the grass might give to the herds good grazing, so that the beautiful hills richly clad with fine timber were all grass covered. The purest and clearest brooks rippled over their pebbly beds, and when the forest was felled production was abundant. A country so enticing, bor- dering upon the white settlements, and given away by the State, could not long wait for population, and very soon after it was granted it was thickly settled. Many Methodists came from the older States, and when George IIill came, he found a church already organized. He was most admirably suited to his work. Energetic, pions and eloquent, great success attended him. He came one winter day across the Ocmulgee to the home of Enoch Hanson, long a good man and a devoted Methodist, in whose house there was a church, now known as Ebenezer. The appointment had been sent by the missionary, and not received, and Hill found
* Recollections of J. B. Hanson and other old members.
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only some little boys at the home. One of these was the at present Rev. J. B. Hanson ; with them he spent his first Sunday on his mission. His circuit began at Ebenezer, he went thence to Salem, thence to Damas- cus in Bibb, through the thinly settled pine woods of Bibb to Rogers, Culloden, and into Upson, and back through Butts to the point from which he started, having twenty-four appointments, which he filled in one month. There are now ten itinerant Methodist preachers in the territory over which he travelled. The first preaching in Upson was at the house of a Mr. Maybrey. The first in Pike, at a little log-church near Josiah Holmes', a few miles from Barnesville. There were already, as early as 1823, several local preachers of ability in the circuit.' Among them was Moses Matthews, who had been a travelling preacher as early as 1805, Thomas Battle, an energetic, sprightly little man from Warren Co., Osborn Rogers, and many valuable laymen from the eastern counties. Oren Woodward, Dr. Thomas Thweatt, Major Tarpley, Holt, and Dr. James Myrick, were leading officials in that carly day. Dr. Myrick was one of the most saintly men of his time. IIe was was for fifty years class leader at Damaseus. Ile lived no day without an evidence of his acceptance with God. The little closet in which he used to pray with his open Bible before him, bore upon the floor where he had knelt three times a day for fifty years, the evidence of how long and how frequent had been his prayers. Ilis house was the preacher's home, and his stirring, noisy, merry wife-Aunt Nancy, as she was called-was the fast friend of every travelling preacher. Ilis brother- in -law, Col. Win. C. Redding, was to the church at Salem what Dr. Myrick was to that of Damascus ; he
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
was long the recording steward of the large circuit, and was one of the most valuable laymen of his day. With such material at his hands, and such a workman as Hill, the success attending him was not to be wondered at. Monroe remained a mission only one year, and in a few years the Monroe Circuit was one of the best in Georgia, a place it has continued to hold to the present time.
The Yellow River Mission joined the Monroe Mission on the north. It was so named from one of the branches of the Ocmulgee, which rises in Gwinnett County, and flows southward. The Mission included the present coun- ties of Newton, Walton, Henry, Fayette, and Clayton. No part of the country was remarkably fertile, but all was sufficiently so to attract many settlers. Wealthy cotton-planters sought the richer lands of the West, but plain, provision-raising Methodists sought these cheaper lands, nearer their old homes. IIammill had grand success in this field, and gathered up a church of 350 members.
The Gwinnett Mission, which Wm. J. Parks travelled, was in a rougher country. There were hills and moun- tains, the lands were not so good, and there was but lit- tle inducement to men of wealth to move where cotton was not produced. The country was, however, soon settled, for lands were very cheap, a lot of land being often bought for a pony. It was now being settled rap- idly, but not thickly. "Often," says the missionary, "I travelled for miles without even a settler's blaze to direct me." The county town of Gwinnett was Lawrenceville. One Sunday morning, early in 1823, the people of the new village were assembled for worship in the log court- house, when the new preacher came in. He was dressed
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in the humblest garb of the country. His coat was of plain country jeans, cut in the old Methodist style, and fitted him badly. A copperas-dyed linsey vest, coarse pantaloons too short for him, blue yarn socks, and heavy brogan shoes, completed the dress of a dark-skinned, stern-looking young man, of whom the people had never heard. A broad smile passed over the face of a congre- gation themselves not most fashionably arrayed; but before the sermon was through it changed into a smile of satisfaction that he had come ; for, to use the language of the section, they found they had a " singed cat," who was far better than he looked .* Wmn. J. Parks was among a simple-hearted, plain people, eager for the Gospel, and his heart was full of zeal. They came in great numbers to hear him, and the results of the year were so encouraging that the young preacher was re- turned, and the end of 1824 he reported 561 white members and 31 colored. New log-churches sprang up all over the county, and many valuable people were gathered into the Church. The father of Jesse and Isaac Boring had moved to these wilds, and these two young men received their first instruction in the art of preach- ing from Wm. J. Parks.
The work in the new purchase presented those diffi- enlties common to recent settlements-the humblest cabins for shelter, the plainest people for hearers, and the hardest fare-but there was compensation in the suc- cess which attended his labors, and the eagerness of the people for the Gospel, for they often walked eight miles to hear preaching. The list of appointments called for thirty sermons in thirty days. It was no
* Recollections of the Mother of Col. G. N. Lexter.
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wonder with such practice as this Parks became so useful a preacher .*
The Appling Circuit in the low country was this year inade a mission, and Adam Wyreck was sent to it, and a mission in the south-west of the new purchase was organ- ized, to which two preachers were sent, John J. Triggs and John Slade. To reach this appointment they had to ride through the Indian nation for a long distance, and had to ride in all four hundred miles from the con- ference.
Triggs had gone out from the last conference, to organize the mission, and now an assistant was sent to him, John Slade, who was recognized as the father of Florida Methodism, though he was not the first to preach the Gospel in the new territory.
He was born in South Carolina, and was now thirty- three years old. He had travelled one year as a supply before 1823, but now for the first time entered the travelling connection, and was appointed to the Chatta- hoochee Mission. After travelling about seven years he located, and gave useful labor as a local preacher, to the building up of the Church in Florida. IIe re-en- tered the Florida Conference in 1845, and travelled in it till his death in 1854. He was a fine specimen of a inan. IIe was tall, well proportioned, with a fine face. Ile sang well and preached with power.t The country in which Triggs and Slade preached was in the corner of three States, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Their circuit was an immense one. The people were perhaps the rudest in the States, and though now and then, on the better lands, they found some thrifty settlers, gene-
* Recollections of Wm. J. Parks. 10*
f Sprague.
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rally they were the poorest and most ignorant class of stock-raisers.
While Triggs and Slade carried the Gospel to these pioneers on the West, J. N. Glenn was sent to the oldest city of America, San Augustine, in Florida. He was the first missionary to East Florida, though Elijah. Sinclair had preached on Amelia Island, two years before him. Florida, while a Spanish province, had excluded the Protestant missionaries, but now it was open to them. Young Glenn found only one member of the Church in the old city, but during the year succeeded in raising a society of ten members. Allen Turner was the Presid- ing Elder of the Oconee District. and his district extend- ed into Florida. He held a quarterly meeting, the first ever held in Florida, at St. Augustine, and forty-two persons knelt at the communion. A church in St. Au- gustine was finally built, and the mission for some years had a feeble existence, but after the growth of Jackson- ville, and the opening of the interior towns, it was aban- doned.
From so efficient a band of workers we might natural- ly expect rapid increase, and we are not disappointed. During the year there was an addition of nearly two thousand members in the bounds of the Georgia work, the total number footing up 10,013 white, and 2,700 colored.
The next conference met in Charleston, February 19, 1824. Bishop George presided. The salaries of preachers were very deficient, and the funds of the con- ference were not sufficient to pay them forty per cent. of their claims. When it is remembered that this deficit in the funds was simply in the matter of quarterage, not including table expenses, and that this quarterage,
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
when all was paid, was but one hundred dollars per an- num, the amount of privation which the preachers knew may be conjectured. At the close of the session, the Bishop held up a purse of silver money with eleven dol- lars in it, and said he "had that morning met a black woman in the street, who gave him that and said, 'Give that to Jesus,' and asked the conference what he should do with it. One brother said, 'Give it to the most needy,' but no preacher was willing to tell how poor he was. One said, 'Here is a young brother who is not able to pay for stabling his horse,' so he gave him some of it, and finding out some others very needy he divided it among them."*
At this conference an advanced movement was made into the new territory of Florida, now being rapidly peopled, and a district was made. Josiah Evans was placed in charge of it. It was called the Tallahassee District, and Evans was not only presiding elder, but in charge of the Tallahassee mission also.
Florida, which had been but recently opened to the Protestant missionary and to the American settler, pre- sents features more unique than any of the Southern States. Florida west of the Chattahoochee is almost a continuous belt of pine woods, now and then broken into by rich hammocks and low swamps. Middle Florida, from the Georgia line to the gulf, and to the Withlacoochee River, is one of the most fertile, and especially one of the best cotton-producing sections in the South ; while East Florida presents almost every diversity of feature of which a semi-tropical country is capable. The St. John's, rising in the everglades,
* Dunwoody.
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made its way northward to the sea ; there were rivers and lakes, there were wild prairies, and orange groves, and live oak forests, all as yet untenanted save by the Seminole and by herds of deer and cattle. The Indi- ans had, in a great measure, vacated middle Florida, and there was now a number of good settlers pouring into that part of the State. There were some men of wealth and intelligence. Tallahassee, the seat of govern- ment, was already the centre of considerable refinement ; but while there was refinement, there was wild dissipa- tion, and the gambler and duellist were there beside the adventurous planter and the young merchant.
The settlers were scarcely in the hammocks, and Tallahassee had but recently been laid out, before the missionary came. Josiah Evans, who was on the Talla- hassee mission, was not a gifted, nor was he a polished man. IIe was rough and alinost unfeeling at times, but he was a brave man, who was used to work, and willing to do it. Morgan Turrentine and Jno. L. Jerry were with him in this work. Such success attended them that at the next conference 571 white and 107 blacks were reported as being in the Church in the dis- trict. Wm. Arnold was again on the Cedar Creek Cir cuit, James Bellah on the Alcovi, Thomas Samford on the Apalachee, and Wiley Warwick on the Grove, and Whitman C. IIill on the Walton. The work was never better manned before or since. ·
The towns, since Methodism had begun its work in the State, had been sadly neglected. Dr. Lovick Pierce, always progressive, had seen the evil resulting from the kind of service which the circuit preacher rendered, had earnestly advocated more attention to these impor- tant county centres. A change was now inaugurated,
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
and Athens and Greensboro were united, and Lovick Pierce was sent to them. Warrenton and Louisville were united, and Thomas Darley was sent in charge. Tilman Snead was on the Warren Circuit this year. IIe died during the year 1875, when he was nearly ninety years old.
He was born in Wilkes County, May 11, 1786, but his family moved to South Carolina in less than two years ; in 1799 they removed to Augusta, and for eight years he remained behind a counter. When he was eighteen years old he removed to St. Simons Island and remained there for four years. There were but few Methodists in South Carolina when he had resided there, and it was in Augusta that his mother, in a pri- vate house, joined the Church. On his return from St. Simons, a few miles from his home, in a meeting-house of the Bush River Circuit, young Snead was converted, and under James Russell he joined the Church ; he was soon licensed to exhort and to preach. He travelled con- seentively for fifteen years, and then located ; in his old age he became dissatisfied with the Church of his early love, and withdrew and formed the Southern Independ- ent Church, and after its failure remained out of any communion, although living a holy life and in good ac- cord with his old brethren till his death .*
At this session of the conference delegates were elected to the general conference, which was to meet in Baltimore in May. The delegates from the South Carolina Conference were Lewis Myers, Nicolas Talley, Samuel K. Hodges, James Norton, William Capers,
* Letter from him written March 8, 1875, when he was 89 years old.
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James O. Andrew, Samuel Dunwoody, Wm. M. Ken- nedy, Lovick Pierce, Jos. Travis.
The excitement of four years before on the suspended resolutions, with reference to the election of presiding elders, had not subsided. Bishop McKendree felt im- pelled to defend his course. This he did before the conference, and in his course he was sustained. In the interval of the conference, that which was then known as the Radical Controversy had been growing in heat, and the Mutual Rights newspaper was in existence in Baltimore. This controversy had already brought some of the ablest and best men of the Church into collision. McCaine, Snethen, Shinn, and Jennings were on one side, while Roszell, Soule, Capers, Myers, and Williams, of the travelling ministry, were on the other; but Dr. Thomas E. Bond, a local preacher and physi- cian in Baltimore, the brother of John Wesley Bond and father of the late Dr. Thomas E. Bond, had made his appearance as a defender of Episcopal Methodism, and had made his power felt as no other man had. The questions at issne had been brought into the elec- tion for delegates, and the conferences had shown their opinion on them by their choice of delegates. The veto power of the Bishops and the election of two more were the points of contest. The conservatives were in the majority and carried their measures.
Lewis Myers, who had always been bitterly opposed to the early marriage of preachers, seconded by Samuel Dunwoody, had a resolution referred to the Committee on Itinerancy, which provided that no preacher who mar- ried before he had travelled four years should receive quarterage or an allowance for family expenses. The general conference was too merciful to pass such a reso-
-
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Intion. After a close ballot, Joshua Soule and Elijah Hedding were elected Bishops, each receiving just enough votes to elect him. They were both New Eng- landers, and possessed many features of character in common. The suspended resolutions were again laid over for four years, and the conference, after the transaction of the usual business, adjourned.
Joseph Travis was now for his fourth year on the Ogeechee District. Travis made his home in Washing- ton, and relates an incident in his life on the district which resulted very happily for the Church.
. We have spoken in a previous chapter of a visit Bishop Asbury had made to the home of Capt. Few, of Columbia County, to see his son, who was serious. The boy grew up to manhood, was educated at Princeton, and became an infidel. He was proud of his philo- sophical skepticism, and did not hesitate to avow and to defend it. He was now living in Augusta, and prac- tising law. IIe sent for Travis to come and spend a few days with him. While there, Col. Few told him of his narrow escape from death from hemorrhage. At family prayer he stood up, while the remainder of the family knelt. After the ladies retired, he introduced his favorite subject. The disputants were both able men, and the discussion continued to a late hour. " Then," says Travis, " I determined to try the argu- mentum ad hominem on him, and asked him if he felt no fear of death when he thought he was about to die ; to which he replied that for a few moments he felt somewhat curious, but that, as soon as he could rally his natural powers, all was calm."
Travis then retired. In a few moments a servant came for him from Col. Few. He hastened to him,
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and found him bleeding from the lungs. Taking him by the hand, the colonel said : " I told you but a few minutes ago I was not afraid to die; but, oh, sir, it is not so." He recovered from this attack, and Travis induced him to read Fletcher's Appeal. He became converted to the truth, and afterward a sincere Chris- tian and an active preacher, whom we shall often see .*
It was while Travis was on this district that he reluc- tantly gave license to preach to a young Vermonter, who was teaching an academy in Abbeville District, S. C. This young man was Stephen Olin. t
Andrew Hammill was made Presiding Elder on the Oconee District, and Saml. K. Hodges on the Athens.
The conference for 1825 met in Wilmington, N. C., Jan. 20th, Bishop Roberts presiding.
The Ogeechee District which Travis had travelled was now abolished, and the Savannah and Augusta Districts were formed. Wm. Arnold continued on the Athens District, and the Oconee District ceased to be while the Milledgeville District was organized. Up to this time, since the State was divided into districts, the old Ogeechee and Oconee Districts, named after the rivers, had held their places, and the circuits were named, like them, after rivers and creeks, but there was now a new method of naming them-the districts were called after the principal towns in them, and the cir- cuits bore the names of the county towns, or the coun- ties in which they were.
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