USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 19
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 19
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Eleven were admitted on trial. Of these eleven young men, three remain to this day.
The districts remained unchanged, and no new circuits were laid out. James O. Andrew was elected a dele-
* See Conference Journal.
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gate to the General Conference which was to meet in Philadelphia in May, and as such a journey required nearly three months' absence from his work, G. F. Pierce was sent as his junior. John S. Ford returned to the work and was on the Gwinnett Circuit. There were in it 802 members, but they were either unable and unwilling to give the preacher a support; and after another trial on the Yellow River Circuit with like re- sult, he was forced to the local ranks again. During the year there was evidently a great revival in the work, since the net increase was nearly 3,000. It must also be borne in mind that Alabama and Mississippi were receiving large accessions to population from Georgia annually. This increase is then evidence of great vital- ity, and the addition of 1,163 colored members, of greater attention to the colored people. A list of the leading preachers on the stations will manifest the fact that the Georgia cities were never better supplied than in 1832: Angusta, J. O. Andrew and G. F. Pierce ; Athens, Lovick Pierce; Columbus, Ignatius A. Few ; Milledgeville, Jesse Boring; Macon, Benjamin Pope.
IIere were a body of men who would have com- manded attention and respect in any city of America ; of them all, save one, were Georgians, and were all of Methodist parentage. The Church in the State was now able to man her own battlements.
Nor were the districts and circuits less ably manned. Samford, Arnold, Howard, Hodges, Parks, were such men as are rarely seen, and G. F. Pierce, Isaac Boring, Jesse Boring, Archelaus II. Mitchell, Caleb W. Key, Jolin C. Simmons, among the young men have shown by their after lives the character of the younger men. Jeremiah Freeman, whose health failed him the
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year before, was a devoted man. He was a man of decided courage. He attacked sin where he found it. Once he gave offence by this course to a passionate man who armed himself with a bludgeon, and took his place in the pulpit to await the preacher. Freeman, though warned, quietly walked into the pulpit and taking him by the coat collar, quietly led him out. The man be- came convicted under his preaching and was afterward converted.
The circuits are still much too large. The Cedar Creek embraces a part of Jasper, the whole of Jones and Baldwin, and a part of Putnam. The Little River, parts of Greene, Oglethorpe, Warren, Columbia, and the whole of Taliaferro and Lincoln Counties, with twenty-five appointments, and requiring a ride of 300 miles to get around it. The Washington, most of Washington, parts of Montgomery, Laurens, Jefferson, and all of Emanuel.
The Sparta, all of Hancock, a part of Greene, Bald- win, Washington. The appointments were for every day, and the preachers followed each other, reaching their appointments once every two weeks. Of course, protracted meetings and pastoral service were out of the question .*
At this conference Peyton Pierce Smith, the oldest son of Rev. John M. Smith, a local preacher, was admitted on trial. He was then only nineteen years old. He was sent, in the early part of his ministry, to the Florida work, and developing rapidly as an efficient preacher, was early made a presiding elder. Though his advantages in youth had been few, by diligence in
* Letter from C. W. Key.
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study he overcame this deficiency, and became a preacher of real power. In 1845, when the Florida Conference was formed, he remained in Florida and continued a leading man there for nearly twenty years, when he died. He was a travelling preacher for over thirty years, and preached 4,414 sermons, and travelled 103,623 miles. He had returned to Fulton County, Georgia, to be present at the preaching of his father's funeral ser- mon. The next Sabbath his own was preached-a con- gestive attack having ended his life after twenty-four hours sickness. *
Myles Green, who was admitted at this conference, had been an itinerant as early as 1800, but had soon retired from the work. He removed to Georgia in 1802 and settled in Baldwin County. The country was then just settled, the lands having been just purchased from the Indians, and the savages and wild beasts were still in their native woods. IIe began to preach as a local preacher, and did most effective work. He con- tinued in this relation for thirty years, and then re- entered the conference in which he said he wished to die. He passed his fourscore years, and was nearing ninety years, having reached his eighty-fifth, when the summons came for him to depart. He gladly received the word, and when told that he must now go, said : " Glory to God," and passed beyond. IIe was much beloved, and was a most useful and valuable man.
At this session the delegates were elected to the Gen- eral Conference, which was to meet in May, in Phila- delphia. There were twelve delegates from Georgia: James O. Andrew, Samuel K. Hodges, Wmn. Arnold,
* Minutes.
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Andrew Hammill, John Howard, Ignatius A. Few, Ben- jamin Pope, Elijah Sinclair, W. J. Parks, Allen Turner, Lovick Pierce, Thomas Samford. They left Georgia together, and rode to Philadelphia on horseback. The session was not an important one, and few questions came before it which were of deep interest. It was evi- dent before the beginning of the session that the episco- pacy must be strengthened, and two new Bishops were decided on. James O. Andrew and John Emory were elected on the first ballot. Andrew was the first Georgian who had ever been elevated to that position, as his father had been the first Georgian who became a travelling preacher. He was eminently fitted for the office, but was most reluctant to accept it. He was willing to endure all the privations which it entailed, but shrank from the greatness of its demands.
It was stated in the great debate of 1844 that he was elected to the office not only because of his fitness for it, but because he held no slaves. That, but for this, some other Southerner would have been chosen. This is possibly true, but he said he was not approached on the subject-inade no pledges and would have made none. He was now about forty-two years old. From the time he had gone forth a timid boy to the Salt- ketcher Circuit, his progress had been a steady one. IIe had richly cultivated his mind, his wonderful native powers had been greatly strengthened, and he had now reached the zenith of his fame as a preacher. To the most cultured, to the plain and unlettered, to the poor negro, he was alike fitted, and by each of them greatly valued. It has been said by his old and partial friends that he never preached as well after he became a Bishop as before. This was no doubt true as a general state-
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ment. Before he became a Bishop he had nothing to do but to preach ; but now he had to plan, to appoint, and to direct. No man ever felt the weight of these demands to a greater degree. He never spared him- self, he never spared his brethren when he felt that Christ demanded the sacrifice. Like Abraham he would have borne his only son to the mount, if God had called for him. Yet while he sent men hither and thither with such apparent calmness, while he made his appoint- ments and adhered to his decision inflexibly, he never made an appointment which he knew would affliet, with- out enduring as much pain in giving it as the one felt who received it. The man that felt the Bishop, who so calmly read him out to a hard field, was pitiless, little knew that his nights had been sleepless and his eyes tearful ere his decision had been made. The writer of this history, who loved him as a father, was one night with him in Augusta ; and he was cheerfully telling of some of his early trials, but he said, " these were nothing to the trials of a Bishop. It has not been travel and absence from home, but when I have had to afflict good men and good churches, it has caused me a deeper pain than I have ever known from other cause. You say I ought to be used to that; ah, my boy, I will never get used to it."
From his election to the Episcopacy to the day of his death, his life was one of most incessant anxiety and toil.
Ile was possessed of a most remarkable delicacy of feeling. The man who seemed to be as hard as iron was as soft and gentle as a woman. The man who in his unflinching courage would not resign his office, be- cause he felt a great principle was involved, suffered
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the agony of a martyr in retaining it. The man who made appointments which inflicted the greatest pain ou his best friends, and made them apparently withont re- luctance, and sternly held to thein, groaned and wept in his chamber ere he decided upon them. He was a man of grandest unselfishness. Poor Asbury, sick and lonely if he did not murmur under his trials, and he did not, at least let others know how deep were his wounds; but Andrew sternly suffered deeper pain, and no man knew how keenly he felt it. He was a man of the noblest magnanimity. Ile never spared himself. IIe never did intentional injustice to friend or foe. He was never cowardly in the presence of wealth and power; he was never harsh toward the lowly or the erring. For thirty-four years as a Bishop he worked on ; from the frozen lakes to the gulf, from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande, he travelled and preached, and pre- sided over conferences, and bore the care of the churches, with all the suffering it brought with it. Then in 1866, ere a man had breathed the thought, he became convinced that he was no longer fitted to fill his place efficiently, and so affectionately, but firmly, he in- sisted that he should be retired. His brethren sorrow- fully granted his request, and thenceforward he labored as best he could. His limbs gave way, and he could not stand ; he sat in his chair in the churches and talked to the children. He had gone to New Orleans on church work ; he was on his way home when he was taken with his last illness. He was in Mobile in the early part of 1870, at the house of his daughter, Octa- via, wife of the Rev. J. W. Rush, and in a few days he grandly and joyfully passed to the land of the living. From 1812 to 1870, for fifty-eight long years, he had
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turned no hair's breadth aside from his line of duty, and there was no spot upon his fair shield. Dented it was, and battered, but no dart of foe had ever found it any- where save in his brave arm in the fore front of the battle. All Methodism owes a debt to James O. An- drew, all Southern Methodism an especial one; but to Georgia Methodists he was dearer than to any other. His son, who bears his name, his son-in-law, the Rev. John W. Rush, his grandson, the Rev. W. P. Lovett, his foster-son, the Rev. Alex. M. Wynn, have all followed him in the work of the ministry, each of them faithful workers ; while his sons-in-law, Thos. M. Meriwether and the Rev. Robert W. Lovett, are doing work scarcely less effective as active laymen. Robert Emory was elected Bishop at the same General Conference.
Though younger than Andrew he was not to be long in his office-and though his education had been much more advanced, he had not nigh so great experience in those trials of the itinerancy, which a man needs to know to fit him to be a Bishop.
He was a highly gifted man, and one of very broad culture. His tastes rather fitted him for the editorial chair, or the professor's lecture room, than for the work of the Episcopacy, which requires abilities which neither scholarship nor gifts of eloquence can supply. Hle was a man of very delicate health, and the labors of his office demanded much power of endurance. IIe was, however, very popular, for he had been very use- ful, and although he had led the reformers of the Church when they seceded, he wrote most vigorously against them. IIe was killed by being thrown from his carriage, as he was on his way to Baltimore from his farm, not many miles distant from the city, after he had
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been a Bishop only a few years. The conference ad- journed, and Bishop Andrew left Philadelphia in company with McKendree, his venerable predecessor and still colleague in office. He went to McKendree and asked for counsel. " He was sitting," said Bishop Andrew, "on the deck of the steamer, leaning on his staff. Looking at me calmly, he said: 'I have but little to say, my dear James. I think little need be said, only this : Shrink from no responsibility. Re- member that he who shrinks from a responsibility which properly belongs to him, incurs the most fearful of responsibilities!'"
The election of Bishop Andrew rendered it neces- sary that the charge of the Augusta Station should fall upon the shoulders of his young assistant, and so by the middle of his second year, George F. Pierce had all the burden of the largest city station in Georgia upon his shoulders. There are some men who always meet, and go beyond the demands made upon them by the occasion, and the young preacher was one of these. The Bishop-elect decided to settle his family at Augusta, and although the people there gave him unsolicited assistance in securing a home, he became, he says, for the first time in his life involved in debt, and his faith- ful Amelia came to his aid by teaching a school. The allowance made for his support by the Georgia Confer- ence, to whom the question by law was referred, was $600 all told .*
The good work of a Bishop was certainly not a remunerative one. The Georgia Conference had now lost him as a member of the body ; but for many years
* Leaves from an Itinerant's Diary, 508.
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he made his home in her territory, and for all his years he regarded Georgia as his mother. It was meet then that he should be brought back to Georgia for burial, and that he should sleep his last sleep in Oxford, the happy home of his mature years.
We return to the minutes.
James Bellah, who has borne the brunt of many a hard campaign, received at this conference his last appointment. He was sent to the Yellow River Circuit. This included a large part of Newton, all of Henry, Butts, Jasper, and one appointment in Monroe. There were twenty-eight appointments, and the preacher, by riding every day, could fill them in one month. James Bellah had now worn himself down in the work, and after a short time on the circuit his health failed, and Mor- gan Bellah, his brother, succeeded him. This good man thus began a work which, in the midst of all difficulties, he has continued to prosecute. He received for his .year's labor $160. How could any man of family have
lived on such a salary ? Out of it he was compelled to furnish a house for himself, a horse, pay his travelling expenses, and indeed provide for all his wants. Of course this would have been simply impossible; and as it was but a fair sample of the salaries of most of the preachers, there can be no wonder that they had farms of their own, and that their good wives supported the family while they were absent for near a month at a time on their labor of love. If one was not able to provide for his family a home, and had no other resources than his own labor, he was forced to a location, and so there were a large number of gifted men in the local ranks who would have continued in the pastorate if they could have been even insufficiently supported.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
Wm. Choice, who was one of the class admitted on trial, was from Hancock County, and was thirty-two years old when he was admitted. He did hard work for twenty-four years as a preacher on large circuits and wide districts. He died in peace in Florida in 1855. He was sent in connection with Samuel Anthony, who was himself just admitted on the Ocmulgee Circuit. These up-country youths, young, inexperienced, and whose early advantages had been very few, were sent to a work which required a monthly ride of over 300 miles, through swamps and boundless pine forests, and among a poor, ignorant, and simple- hearted people. Methodism can truly say that she has always turned a ready ear to the cries of the poor, and such as she had, has she freely given. While other denominations have left the field without the laborer, while they were patiently toiling to make him skilful, our Church has taken him who had but little more knowledge than that best of all, a knowledge of Jesus, and sent him forth to tell, from the depths of a rich ex- perience, how peace may be found. Mistakes in gram- mar and in science have seemed to her of but little con- cern in comparison with an entire ignorance of these fundamental Christian truths which the humblest be- liever knows as well as the wisest. The results of her history sustain the wisdom of this course. Wm. Choice and Samuel Anthony began their work ; and prayer and preaching and constant study made them workmen worthy of any place. There were a sufficient number of laborers now to occupy the whole field. The circuits and missions were so large that they embraced all of Georgia and Florida, and not more than ninety men did all the work. From Pensacola to
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San Augustine ; from the gulf coast to Habershamn, the preachers were distributed, and although the work was hard and the salaries paid entirely insufficient, yet the preachers upheld the standard. Although Methodisın in Georgia had passed its fortieth year, yet there were trials and dangers now equal to, and in many cases even beyond, those of the first preachers, for they at least had a healthy land to work in, while many of this generation must inhale the deadly malaria of the swamps of South- west Georgia and Florida.
The conference for 1833 was held at La Grange, Troup County, January 2.
La Grange was now a sprightly and prosperous county town, not yet ten years old. It was on the western bor- der of the conference. It was noted then as now for its hospitality, and was the first place in the new purchase to entertain a conference. To reach it the preachers had to travel on horseback and in gigs and sulkies, as there were no public conveyances, but yet a goodly number of them were present on the first day. Some came from the southeastern border of Georgia and the wilds of Florida. A journey to Europe could now be inade in shorter time and with much more ease than many of them made the trip to La Grange.
Bishop Andrew was present at this session, and pre- sided. John Howard was again the secretary. As Georgia had projected no college of her own, there was considerable strife on the part of the newly-established Randolph Macon and La Grange (Ala.) Colleges to secure her co-operation ; and William McMahon, agent of La Grange, and John Early, of Randolph Macon, Va., came to the conference to advocate the claims of their respective schools. The matter was referred to s
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committee, of which S. Olin was chairman. The con- ference finally resolved to accept the proposition of the trustees of Randolph Macon. Dr. Few, who was anxions for a Georgia institution, was opposed to the resolution, and succeeded in preventing the appointment of an agent ; but, by vote of the conference, the agent ap- pointed by the college had full permission to prosecute his agency in Georgia.
The trustees of the school at Culloden, which was then a very flourishing country village, had proffered their institute to the conference under certain conditions. It was not accepted this year, but action was deferred till the next session, came up then in another shape, and finally resulted not in the acceptance of the Culloden School, but in the establishment of the Manual Labor School and of Emory College.
At this conference nine preachers were admitted. Morgan Bellah, the brother of James, who had travelled the Yellow River Circuit, was also admitted .. He has, after thirty-five years' hard labor, been superannuated. These are all who remain of this class.
Thomas Darley, after a life of great usefulness, had gone home. He died in Harris County, in 1832, having been only one year on the retired list. While the old soldier had laid off his armor and sought rest, George M. Davis, a young worker in Florida, had fallen sud- denly dead. The number of superannnated preachers was very large for such a conference as the Georgia then was. There were fifteen upon it. They were nearly all old men, who had worked a long time. Some of them had been local for many years, and had returned to the conference to die in it. Benj. Blanton, who had located in 1778; David Garrison and Samuel Annesly, who had
13
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been active preachers in the first years of the century ; Lewis Myers, who had begun work in 1799, were on this list. No one was on it who was not worn out; and then the Church did not recognize a mental defect as ground for this relation. There had been great prosperity in the newer sections of the State. During the year 1831, when Isaac Boring and A. II. Mitchell were on the La Grange Circuit, then including Troup, Meriwether, and Harris Counties, the number added to the Church was quite 1,000 members, and now, though the circuit was divided, under the ministry of Norman and Wil- liams, there was an addition of over 200 members. The Columbus District alone had increased in two years over 1,200 members. The Augusta District, which had been in existence for two years, was now under the presidency of Lovick Pierce. He had not been on a district since the time he left the Oconee in 1809. Ilis district then extended from Athens to St. Mary's. It was now com- paratively a small and compact district in the heart of Georgia. Yet it occupied the territory now covered by nearly three districts. Wm. J. Parks, after one year on the Athens District, took the important Apalachee Cir- cuit, which had for years called for the best men of the Church. There were no inen in those days who seemed specially fitted for only one kind of work. The circuit, the district, the station, were in turn filled by each of them. Thomas Samford, for so long time presiding elder, was on the Walton Circuit, which still included Newton in its boundaries, and in which there were nearly 1,000 members.
A new work had been laid off some few years before this in the southwestern part of the new purchase called the Lec mission, and now James Dunwoody was
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sent to it. It included Lee, Sumter, and Marion Counties. Americus, the present beautiful county site of Stimter, was then a new town, and there was preach- ing in it at a private house a part of the time, and a part of the time in a log building, which served as a court-house. This was the second year of the existence of the mission, but there were 200 members reported in these counties. Dunwoody says that his success was but small in the work." The great value of the lands in that section were as yet unrecognized, and the large population and immense wealth that afterward belonged to it, were not as yet. There were two other missions in this section, the Etowah, and the Randolph. A new mission was also established in the upper part of the State, designed to provide the gold regions with the Gos- pel. It was left to be filled by a supply, and was called the Chestatee Mission.
Immense excitement had arisen in Georgia resulting from the discovery of gold on some of the rivers, in the mountain country. This discovery had been made in 1829 in Habersham County, and afterwards on the Ches- tatee River, a mile or more from Dahlonega. Imme- diately numbers flocked to these mines. There was the wild gambler, the wealthy speculator, the shrewd land- trader, and, now and then, some sober settler who sought a home in one of the charming valleys among the mountains, as well as the gold hunter who had come to mine. The missionary was sent with these adventu- . rers. He reported at the next conference 130 members. During this year West Florida, and that part of the Chattahoochee Circuit which was in Alabama, was at-
* Dunwoody's Life.
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tached to the Alabama Conference, and ten members of the Georgia Conference were transferred to . Ala- bama. At the conference, of 1834, there was reported a decrease in the Georgia work, though there really was an increase. This is accounted for by the transfer just spoken of.
Morgan Bellah, who had travelled the Yellow River Circuit the year before, was now sent upon the Grove. This circuit embraced all Franklin, Jackson, Madison, Hall, one-half of Gwinnett, and one. appointment in Walton. There was paid him this year by all these counties $250. It was in vain that the General Confer- ence required the circuits to pay quarterage of a hundred dollars to the preacher and the same to his wife, and an amount sufficient for each child with family ex- penses. There was no means of enforcing these pay- ments, and a large circuit was comforted by the faet that the preacher, if he did not return, had no claim on them, and the conference would still supply their pul- pit. There was as yet no financial system, no faithful preaching on the duty of men to use their money for Christ. Indeed, it is a sad truth that a large part of the preaching of the times was calculated to strengthen rather than to overthrow covetousness. The constant theme of many preachers was the extravagance of the people, and the duty of close economy and constant industry was enforced, but, alas, nothing was said about liberal giving ; but a better day was coming. Slowly, yet surely.
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