USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 18
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 18
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increased to a half million. Then a few log-houses constituted the largest city away from the coast; now there were a score of elegant towns with fine schools, good churches, and beautiful homes, in the interior. Then infidelity ruled in polite circles; now there was but little known or heard of it. The new lands of the western counties were not being slowly peopled by hardy pioneers, but were rapidly settled by families of cultiva- tion and refinement. Portions of the State there were still which presented the aspect of the whole country forty years before. The district of Josiah Evans was as large as that of Richard Ivy, and the preachers of the Tallahassee District had to face greater dangers and endure as great privations as their fathers in the first years. Only one part of Georgia was unoccupied by the whites, but the Methodist preachers were then among the Indians. Nothing had daunted these heralds of good tidings; the mountains, the swamps, the wiregrass, the everglades, had all alike been visited by them. The wigwam of the Cherokee, the Creeks, and the Seminole had heard the song of the daring itinerants.
We have spoken of the labors of the Baptist Church, and a history of Methodism as a great Christian agency ought to recognize gladly the labors of these good men in the same work. Their first association was formed in 1784, and side by side with the Methodists, not always, it is true, on the best of terms with them, had they worked on. The Virginians who came to Georgia were, many of them, Baptists, and when Silas Mercer, Abraham Marshall, and their sons labored, great success followed them.
It could not be expected that Christians agreeing so well together should be long at war, or disagreeing in so
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many things should never come into collision, but gen- erally there was social brotherhood if there was public battle.
The Presbyterians came with the first into the State, and had churches in some important points, but alas! for the progress of this excellent body, an iron rule required that every minister should have a classical and theological education, and the times offered neither opportunity to secure the training, nor support for the learned man. So the school-room appropriated what the harvest field demanded.
As to the Protestant Episcopal Church, the first Church in the colony, save in the two cities of Savannah, An- gusta, and perhaps Macon, there was neither church buildings nor communicants. The Catholics were not allowed religious liberty in Georgia till after the revo- lution, and there were now only a very few Catholic churches in the State.
The Methodist Protestant Church had been organ- ized, and some of the ablest of the local preachers had gone into the movement, and many good laymen, but the disaffection had been by no means considerable.
Although the financial interest was the least prosper- ous one, yet the preachers were receiving a better sup- port, and were not absolutely compelled to leave the work as soon as they had families around them, but the obligation to support the ministry, and to serve God with money, were not as yet recognized.
The church buildings were all of them inferior. In the country they were generally of logs, perhaps a few were framed; in the towns, barn-like and uncomfort- able. There was not a brick church in Georgia. There were only a few parsonages-one in Savannah, Augusta,
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and Milledgeville, and perhaps one in Macon. The circuits were still very large, and great toil was de- manded to fill the appointments.
This, then, is a view of the Church and State as we are able to give it. There was in Georgia and Florida, at the last conference held in Columbia in which they were represented, 20,585 white members.
At this conference Bishop Soule presided. The appointments were made both for the South Carolina and Georgia Conferences, and they were thencefor- ward separate bodies. For over forty years their inter- ests had been identical, but with the growth of the conference, and the increase in the number of preach- ers, they had become practically separate. The preach- ers in the Georgia territory rarely crossed the line, and vice versa. The general conference of 1828 had given permission to the South Carolina Conference to divide at such time and in such way as it saw fit, and at this conference the work was done. Never two conferences were made from one with less difficulty, and with less of feeling, save the feeling of regret, which all yoke-fellows feel at separating, to meet no more as a community.
The Georgia work had in it five districts and the South Carolina five. There were 40,335 white mem- bers ; 20,585 are in Georgia, the rest in South Carolina. Save a portion of the Cherokee country, the Georgia Conference covered with its five districts all of Georgia, and all the settled parts of Florida. The territory was large, much of it new, and all of it promising. Seventy- five preachers received appointments. There were four stations, Augusta, Savannah, Macon, and Columbus; six half stations; five missions ; the rest of the work was laid out in large circuits.
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The districts remain unchanged from last year, save that Andrew Hammill was released from the charge of Columbus, and that his district was much enlarged by new territory, extending from Carrollton on the north to Randolph on the south, and from the Flint to the Chattahoochee.
The whole work was well supplied with efficient preachers. We may. well doubt whether at any time the average of pulpit excellence was greater than in the conference at this period. Of all the preachers who received appointments at that conference only four re- main to this day (1877): Lovick Pierce, James Dun- woody, Jno. W. Talley, Jesse Boring. Of these, one only is reported as effective-Lovick Pierce. There are superannuated James Dunwoody and Jno. W. Talley, Jesse Boring. Of all the rest, not one remains in the conference, and but few are living. Most of them, full of years and honors, have gone to the rest of the labor- ers beyond.
Jno. W. Talley, at this conference, was sent from Columbia to the Pensacola Mission, the most remote of the western appointments. A ride from Columbia across the entire State of Georgia and Florida to the gulf was before him, and all the comfort he received was to be told that it was well to bear the yoke in his youth. Jesse Boring on the Chattahoochee Mission, Talley on the Pensacola, Isaac Boring at Tallahassee, showed the training to which the young preachers were subjected. It was Spartan enough, but it made them heroes in a day when heroism was demanded for the work.
There was a large part of the country now quite populous and wealthy which lay on the Flint, east of
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Columbus, in which is now Talbot, Taylor, and Macon Counties. Two missionaries were sent to this section, which was called the Flint River Mission. One of these was the Hon. H. W. Hilliard, who began his career as a Methodist preacher and who was afterward a member of Congress and a minister to European courts. Some success attended the labors of the preachers, and 339 were formed into classes. It is probable that the first Methodist preaching in Talbotton was done this year by the missionary on the Flint River Mission.
The Florida work continued very prosperous. Tal- Jahassee and Magnolia were made a station with 103 members. Although as yet there were no Indian dis- turbances, the privations of the preachers were very great. Jno. F. Weathershy, who travelled the castern part of the State in 1829, says the fare in most of the homes at which he stopped was hominy and Youhon teu-neither bread nor meat. A pole cabin, with dirt floor, was his resting-place, and a ride of twenty-five miles through an untracked wild, needful to reach a congregation of half a dozen hearers, his daily work.
John W. Talley, we have seen, was sent to the Pensa- cola Mission this year. Pensacola had been the most important town in Florida during the time the Span- iards held possession of the country. There were very large trading houses, Scotch and English, which did large business with the Indians of the Creek Nation in Alabama. Charles Hardy had been sent to Pensacola as early as 1827. He had made arrangements to build a church, but the yellow fever, of which he had an attack, had driven him away. The next year Isaac Boring was sent from the Keewee Circuit in South Carolina to this station. In 1831 Jno. W. Talley, from Columbia, 12
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was sent to it. The young city had given great promise of growth, and had drawn a large population soon after Florida was purchased, but it was not long before the growth of Mobile, and the frequent visits of the yellow fever, caused as rapid a decline as there had been quick growth. We are permitted to get an insight into the difficulties the missionaries met with in reaching this remote point, since we have the personal recollections of the Rev. Jno. W. Talley.
He had been for two years in the mountain country of North Carolina, and at the division of the conference and the formation of the Georgia he was appointed to Pensacola. The Bishop sent for all the young mission- aries, and encouraged them as best he could, and young Talley made ready for his long journey, as IIardy and Boring had done before him.
He left Columbia on horseback, spent a few days in Green County, and rode through the State to Columbus. Here he purchased a sulky, but his horse taking fright at a thunderstorm, ran away, broke his sulky to pieces, and he narrowly escaped death, though he was only badly bruised. IIe then refitted, and turned his face to the South. Ile was now in the Indian nation. He reached the next day a white settlement in Henry County, Ala- bama. Making his way through the flat pine-woods of Eastern and Southern Alabama, he pressed on. Houses were few, and accommodations were poor indecd. At a little log-cabin, the home of a hunter, he was sheltered for the night, and fed upon musty corn-bread, the meal beaten in a mortar, and the tough lungs of a deer fried in rancid bacon grease, and corn-coffee sweetened with syrup. On such fare, hungry as he was, the missionary could not break his long fast, and it was fifteen miles to
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the next house. He, however, found, as he says, an oasis in the desert, in a widow's neat cottage and well- supplied table. Thence he pushed through the rain to the house of the first Methodist he had seen since he left Columbus. After reaching the Florida sea-coast, and crossing the Escambia Bay, he found himself still ten miles from Pensacola, and with no choice but to walk. He began bravely enough, but soon his limbs gave ont. He, however, reached the city the next day. The colored barber was a Methodist, and he found him first, and then songht out his host. His host was an Englishman, who had had a most adventurous and varied experience in life. When he came in, and the family greeted him, they asked him whether he had breakfast. When he told them no, the reluctantly-told story came from the good wife that there was nothing to eat in the house, and no money to buy anything with. The young preacher handed the good man a five-dollar note, and soon their wants were met. In this little church there were some families of position and of refine- ment. In the Sunday-school, then a bright young girl, was Miss Octavia Walton, afterwards Mrs. Le Vert, whose mother was a member of the church there.
We have been thus minute in giving this reminiscence because we are anxious to bring out the difficulties under which the early preachers labored, that from this history we may imbibe something of that heroic spirit. which enabled them in God's strength to gain such conquests. There was surely nothing of that puerility, that effeminacy, so distasteful to the apostle of work, in such a life as these first preachers led. Is such a spirit needless now ?
The Methodist missionary was the only preacher in
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property to the conference. McVean seems to have been one of those men who, sincerely pious, are yet sadly weak, and ever and anon, in the course of his life and ministry, he would drink to excess ; then there was deep remorse, and an entire reform, and then, alas! there was another fall. He had lost his place among his brethren as a preacher, but when the lonely, weak old man came to die, he left his little all to his old yoke- fellows. Samuel Bradburn and Henry M. Kollock had the same sad experience, with a happier result. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."
The fund of Special Relief, which was founded by Bishop Asbury in 1806, was the only vested fund of the conference, and to it the old preacher's bequest was added.
There was another legacy reported to the conference, which at some time before had been left by Thomas Grant, whom we have mentioned as having built the first Methodist church in the State. $1,500 in cash and quite a body of land was the moicty of the con- ference.
The ladies in Savannah, Columbus, and Macon had working societies, which sent up funds for the use of the conference.
During the conference Brother Hearn, the agent of the La Grange College, in Alabama, but in the Tennes- see Conference, was present, and endeavored to secure the cooperation of the body in building up that institu- tion, and was given permission to do all he could in col- lecting funds.
James O. Andrew introduced certain resolutions admitting and deploring the want of interest in the Sunday-school cause, and Dr. L. Pierce addressed the
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conference on the subject of the Georgia Educational Society, which was a society for the education of young preachers.
The missionary interest demanded, as the conference thought, a special agent, and a resolution was passed suggesting such an appointment. Of the members present the first day only one is living now, Dr. Lovick Pierce.
Eleven young men were admitted on trial. One of these was Geo. Foster Pierce, the oldest son of Dr. Lovick Pierce ; another was Archelaus H. Mitchell, now a presiding elder in Alabama. These are the only two of the class who are now alive and in the min- istry.
It would be offensive to propriety, and as offensive to most of the living men who pass under our review, to do more than to recognize their labors; leaving all careful sketches of their lives, and especially all eulo- gium, to an after-time. We shall endeavor to restrain an eager pen and pursue this course. Suffice it, then, to say that Geo. F. Pierce, just from college, in his twenty- first year was admitted at this Macon Conference into the travelling connection, and began his life work as junior preacher in the Alcovi Circuit with Jeremiah Freeman, and that Archelaus H. Mitchell was sent on the La Grange Circuit with Isaac Boring. Young Pierce entered with all heartiness into his work, and was as much at home and as useful as the second man on a circuit as he has been since that time in more exalted positions. The blue broadcloth suit, so offensive to Father Collingsworth, was laid aside for plainer and more Methodistic apparel. His presiding elder or- dered him to various points, and to camp-meetings; and
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perhaps the Bishop has known no year since the one he travelled as Jeremiah Freeman's junior, more richly filled than this was with pleasant memories.
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Isaac Boring and his young colleague had a year of wonderful prosperity. There were nearly 800 added to the Church, and although the Harris Circuit was formed from the La Grange, and 614 members went with it, there was still a larger number of members in the La Grange Circuit than before they began their labors.
On the Cedar Creek Circuit, Thomas Maybry was preacher in charge. One was left to be supplied, and Caleb W. Key was selected. He had for some years been a useful local preacher, and as class-leader in La Grange, a sub-pastor. He resolved to give up all and enter the work, and did so. He was employed on this large circuit, and became so discouraged that he re- solved to return to his home. On his way home, he spent a night with Myles Green, a most excellent man, and he induced him to return to his work. His colleague and himself conducted a protracted meeting at Hills- boro, then an unusual thing on the circuits, though more common on the stations. The meeting at Hillsboro was very profitable, and some sixty or seventy persons were added to the Church. The changes in the coun- try have made great changes in the Church, and where there was once flourishing churches in those parts of Jones and Jasper, there is found scarce a trace.
The new country has depleted the old. In this meet- ing, R. A. T. Ridley, a young North Carolinian, of good education, and of fine family position, was con- verted. His parents were Presbyterians, and there was not a Methodist in his family. IIc, however, joined the Church, and became very zealous. In a year or two
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afterward he went to Charleston, to attend medical lec- tures, and here he formed a friendship for Dr. White- ford Smith, then a young preacher. Dr. Smith made him a class-leader. He thus began an active Christian life, which continued till his death. He removed to La Grange. He was much trusted by the people of his county, was their representative and senator, was active, public-spirited and liberal. Blessed with large wealth, he was liberal in the disposal of it, and though a physician with a large practice, he did not ask exemp- tion from the offices of the Church, but was a most efficient steward and trustee as long as he lived. Ile was very much beloved and honored, and was a most useful man. He died after a short illness, while yet in the vigor of his manhood.
The more careful attention given to Church records may account for an apparent decrease in the number of members. There was reported a decrease of near 700 during the year.
John B. Barton was appointed missionary to Africa. IIe was the first native Georgian who had ever been sent on a foreign mission. He was born in Savannah, and had spent one year among the negroes in Georgia. After the Colonization Society had begun its work and established a colony in Liberia, the hope was entertained that not only might the colonists be blessed by a Christian ministry, but that all Africa might be Christianized through the new republic; and missionaries, black and white, were sent out. Barton volunteered for the work, and went to Africa. Ile established a mission station some distance from the coast, and after working a year, he returned to Charleston, married a Miss Gilbert, and returned to 12*
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Africa. Here his health gave way and in a short time he died.
Some of the districts were supplied with new presi- dents. John Howard, who had removed from Greens- boro' to Macon, was sent upon the Milledgeville District. This was his first district, but he was admirably fitted for this office, as for every one to which he had been called.
Win. J. Parks was placed on a district this year, and travelled the Athens, not far from his home. This, too, was the first time he had been called to the presiding elder- ship, and if ever man was placed in his true position in the Church, it was when Win. J. Parks was made pre- siding elder. Here he evinced that ability for the diffi- cult work of presiding elder which made him so often an incumbent of the office. While the districts were not so large as they had once been, every year brought new difficulties in the way of filling the office. There were more appointments to fill, and they demanded a higher order of men ; there were more married preachers to provide for, and as yet there were no parsonages in the interior, and the presiding elder was compelled, as far as possible, to consult the convenience of those who had settled homes. The salaries were so small, and so uncertain, that the presiding elder knew that oftentimes an appointment must needs be afflictive to him who received it. It was now no longer as it had been in Asbury's day, that the Bishop was alone responsible; the presiding elder was held to strict account by the preach- er and the people for the appointment.
Sometimes a preacher was sent a long way from his home to a poor circuit ; thus James Dunwoody, who was living in Houston County, was sent on the Liberty Cir-
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cuit, over one hundred miles from home. This circuit included Tatnall, Liberty, and parts of Montgomery, Bryan, Emanuel, and McIntosh Counties, and was eighty miles long. At his first quarterly meeting he received four dollars. Three months' labor and four dollars com- pensation. He started home, and after spending a few days, left with his family $3.75 to support them for three months more, and started for his work with twenty-five cents in his pocket. Ile spent this in ferri- age, and as he had no money to pay for lodging he camped out with a traveller, but went without either supper or breakfast. The next day he reached his Sab- bath appointment and preached, and at a hospitable house partook, after the sermon, of the first food he had eaten for twenty-five hours. "Such was my extreme poverty this year," he says, "that I had to appear in the pulpit in tattered garments, patched till they would bear patching no more," and yet this circuit was one of the best in the Oconee District.
John C. Simmons, who entered the conference this year, was sent to the San Augustine and Nassau Mis- sion, on the southeastern frontier of the conference. He remained in the work for nearly forty years. IIe was a man of fine person, good preaching gifts, very decided, and very zealous. He was on all kinds of work. He was a presiding elder, circuit preacher, and on stations. IIe always did his work well. He was on the Griffin District in 1867, when he was stricken with a death- stroke of apoplexy. He had been a useful and laborious preacher for thirty-six years.
John C. Simmons was a man of no ordinary mind. He had strong common sense, and, for those days, was a man of good culture. He preached with much force
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and unction. Firm in his convictions, he had the appear- ance of sternness, but he was a man of warm and gentle heart. He went where he was sent, and never deviated from his work. A vigorous man, he was able to do much; and zealous in the work, he labored untiringly. From the everglades of Florida to the mountains of Georgia he travelled in the prosecution of his ministry. He died in full vigor, and peacefully ended a useful life.
The conference met in Augusta, on Thursday, the 5th of January, 1832.
Elijah Hedding was in the chair. This was his first visit to Georgia, and his last. He came from the Hol- ston Conference, through the Indian nation, by way of Athens, to Augusta. Ile speaks of the newness of the country, and of the want of comfort in the homes ; but, as the country beyond Athens was not ten years settled in its oldest part, he found no fault with that, and ex- pressed himself as greatly pleased with the kindness he received. In. Augusta he saw what was always an un- pleasing sight to even Southern men, however strong their belief in the righteousness of slave holding. Ile saw a slave auction, and naturally, if imprudently, said to a Northerner by his side : " Does not that make your Yankee blood boil ?" As this was the time when the abolition excitement was beginning, and when there was intense feeling on the subject, and when every effort was being made to excite an insurrection in the South, it was not a matter of wonder that his remark excited some displeasure, and that he was advised to be more prudent .*
* Hedding's Life.
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The year gone by had been one of great prosperity, and over 4,000 white and colored members had been added to the Church.
Martin P. Parks, as agent for Randolph Macon Col- lege, visited the conference and began those negotiations which resulted in the decision, at an after conference, to endow a professorship in that institution.
A resolution was passed at this session suggesting to the General Conference a large increase in the number of bishops.
The same question which has been before every Gen- eral Conference, and which, we have seen, was so stoutly discussed as early as 1804, whether the bishops should be few or many, was thus passed upon, and the desire was for a large increase in the number of bishops; * it will be seen that the Georgia Conference then held ground which her representatives have long since aban- doned in the General Conference. There was then 550,000 members in the Church in the United States, and there were only four effective bishops, Bishop Mc- Kendree being too feeble for work; but, considering the fact that they had no district conferences to attend, and that the facilities for travel did not offer such oppor- tunities for them to meet special calls, there was less constant labor demanded of them than the M. E. Church South, with 700,000 members, now asks of her episcopal college.
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