USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 23
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 23
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John W. Glenn still supervised the interests of the Cherokee District. In this district the Marietta Mission now made its appearance. The county of Cobb had
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been laid out in 1832, and was now being settled by numbers who had been drawn to it by the prospect of securing cheap homes. Marietta was selected as the county-site in 1834, and in 1835 John P. Dickinson was sent to the Cumming Circuit. He had an appointment at the log court-house in Marietta. This village was served for several years by the preacher from the Cumn- ming work, but this year Cobb was made a separate mis- sion, and Russell W. Johnson was sent upon it. He was a good preacher and was successful in his work, and reported at the conference of 1839, 395 members in the new mission. This mission included all of Cobb, a part of Cherokee, and a part of Forsyth. The Dahlonega Mission included all of Lumpkin, White, and parts of Cherokee and Forsyth, while the McDonough Circuit included Butts, Henry, a part of Newton, and a part of Monroe. These immenso circuits, which called for such labor and such sacrifices, are always the necessity of new countries, but have their day, are reluctantly given up, and rarely ever until the Church has been seriously injured by surface culture. The district of John W. Glenn at the present time is divided between the Elber- ton, Atlanta, Griffin, La Grange, Gainesville, Dalton, and Rome. The size of the district and the labor of travelling it may be judged from this fact, and fromn the further fact that as yet there was not a mile of railroad in this part of the State.
La Grange was this year made a station in connec- tion with West Point, and James B. Payne sent to it.
The Macon District was still under charge of Wm. Arnold. The newer parts of this district had been much blessed during the past few years. We have spoken of the revivals on the Perry and Forsyth Cir- 15
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cuits. This year there was a remarkable camp-meeting in Upson, on the Thomaston Circuit, of which W. W. Robison had charge. The Upson Camp-ground was in the midst of an excellent settlement, and to it came citizens even from the neighboring county of Monroe and occupied tents. Good meetings had been common at the annual assemblage. There were a large number of young married men who were friends of the Church, but had never been converted. Among them was Edwin B. Atwater. He sat in the congregation, at first an unconcerned hearer. During the progress of the sermon he was thoroughly awakened and happily con- verted. He went at once to work, and during the meet- ing over 150 persons professed religion. In our sketch of Methodism in the cities we have given full account of the wonderful revivals in Augusta, Columbus, and Savannah. The increase during the year was 3,894 white members-over 7,000 in two years.
The collection for the year was $5,030.87. During the year 1839, the centenary of Methodism arrived, and centenary collections and centenary meetings were held all over the land. In Georgia there was great enthusi- asm. The collections were to be divided between Education, Missions, and other objects of benevolence. To illustrate the spirit of the times, we have a letter from James Sewell concerning a meeting held in Spring- field, Effingham County. He says it is a piney-woods village, and none the worse for that. He expected to get two or three hundred dollars. The preacher in charge arose after the sermon and said he was a poor man, but he owed all he had to God and Methodism. He said his mite was small, but they might put him down for twenty dollars and his wife for five. Then
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Father G. arose and gave $120. Then Father Myers gave $100, and by the time the meeting was concluded they had $1,000.
On the Oglethorpe Circuit the collection amounted to $1,007.25 ; Covington $2,700; Leon Circuit, Florida, $1,300, and $3,600 in Burke. Nor was this all the liber- ality shown by the people, and it is somewhat difficult to account for it. The great financial crisis was on the country, and the leading men of the cities were bank- rupt ; but it may be the tidal wave had not as yet reached the country places with its full volume. Even the missionary collection at Eatonton amounted to $1,200 during the conference session.
There were wonderful revivals throughout the State. In Columbus 250 joined the Church. In Macon 90 united with it on one Sabbath. 250 on the Greensboro Circuit ; 206 at a camp-meeting in Burke. The year 1839 was a royal year for Georgia Methodism.
The conference met in Augusta, Dec. 11, 1839, Bishop Morris again presiding. Bishop Roberts was to have presided, but his health was too feeble for him to fulfil his original intention, and Bishop Morris came in his stead. Augusta had just passed the most terrible year in her history, when the yellow fever raged with unpre- cedented fury. The session does not seem to have been one of special interest. The ordinary questions were asked and answered, and the educational interest of the Church received its proper share of attention.
Twenty-two were received on trial. Richard Lane, was one; after years of usefulness in Georgia, he re- moved to Texas and served the East Texas Conference efficiently for some years, and is now superannuated.
Alexander Means, who also joined the conference,
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was already superintendent of the Manual Labor School. He was at this time a young physician. He had entered Georgia a teacher, and had been for several years a local preacher of great zeal and usefulness. He had devoted himself with much ardor to science, and when the Man- nal Labor School was organized, he was selected as its superintendent. He has been more or less connected with the educational interests of the Church from that day to this.
Dr. Means is so well known and so generally beloved, that neither a sketch of his life nor a testimonial to his worth are needful in this history, even if we were per- mitted by the rule we have adopted to give it. His la- bors are so intimately connected with the educational interests of the Church in Georgia, that we defer all no- tice of them to that chapter.
W. M. Crumley began his life-work as a travelling preacher this year. He was admitted on trial and ap- pointed to Madison County, Florida. Leaving the bleak mountains of Habersham County, in Georgia, while yet the January snows were on the ground, he made his way over the muddy hills of Middle Georgia into the Wire-Grass Country. Here he was forced to swim creeks, to travel for almost whole days through the wide sloughs of that flat country. At last he reached his circuit. The people had fled to the block-houses, and those who were at home were expecting every moment to be forced again into these shelters. He travelled from block-house to block-house. There was, of course, nothing like church organization, and the only support accorded to the preacher was that which the people offered without solicitation. IIe was compelled to travel through long stretches of alinost uninhabited pine-woods, to find a
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home in the cabin of some adventurous stock-raiser, or, in the hummock country, to find shelter with some planter, whom neither exile from society nor the dread of Indians could force from his rich cotton-fields. To bear all this exposure, and, worse than this, to have a gentle, loving wife to submit to it, was the introduction of this young and timid itinerant to his work. He had left his only child, a little girl, with her grandmother in IIabersham, and brought only his young wife with him. The tender parents were very anxious about their child. He had one dollar left when he reached Florida. He found a family almost starving. The husband had been killed by the Indians, and the widow and children were without bread. He gave them his last cent.
In Madison he went to the post-office and found a letter from his kins-people concerning tidings from his child-but alas ! the postage. It was twenty-five cents, and he did not have a farthing. Sadly he returned the letter to the postmaster, and went to prayer-meeting. After it was over, the owner of the solitary candle took it up, and found in the candlestick a five-dollar note. As no one claimed it, he gave it to the preacher.
The work on which young Crumley was, had to be marked out. The Indians still lurked in the swamps, and often, as he tracked his way through the forests, he would see where the bullet of an Indian had spilled the blood of a foe. Once he found that the family with which he had hoped to spend the night had fled to the block-house six miles away, and it was already dark. At the great hazard of being shot by the Indians, or mis- taken in the dark by the whites as an Indian and shot by them, he reached the fort and succeeded in making himself known. He passed, however, through the year
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safely, and was instrumental in the conversion of many souls.
R. H. Howren, who was also in Florida, tells his own story thus :
" It was during the Indian war, when the torch, toma- hawk, and rifle were doing their deadly work in this country. My work was mainly with the soldiers and with citizens clustered together under stockade protec- tion. I knew that I was every day exposed to sudden and violent death ; but the divine promise sustained me, ' Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.' On one occasion, while holding a protracted meeting near Newnanville, we were surrounded by sev- enty-five Indian warriors, who withdrew without inter- fering with us at all. We learned afterwards that their intention was to make an attack upon us, but, seeing such an unusual stir among the people, they became alarmed and withdrew. During one of our night ser- vices they climbed into the pines around the house, in- tending to fire upon us, not being able to do so from the ground, owing to the stockade. Fortunately, we heard the signal given for firing, and ran into the body of the house and escaped. One of our local preachers, brother McCray, was shot from his horse and killed while re- turning from one of his appointments, Sabbath after- noon. Ile was in company with a Mr. McNeil, who escaped with four balls through his clothes and two in his horse; the noble animal, though badly wounded, sprang forward and soon bore his rider beyond the reach of danger. A little boy, twelve years old, riding a little behind, wheeled his pony and took the other end of the road-a large Indian jumping in the road nearly opposite the boy. The race was nearly equal for
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hundred yards or more, the savage making several reaches for the pony's bridle ; but, at length, the lad outstripped him and escaped in safety to the fort. Bro. McCray was talking to his unconverted friend on the subject of religion, when the guns fired. How literally he realized the poet's hope :
" ' Happy if with my latest breath, I may but gasp His name ; Preach Him to all, and cry in death, Behold ! behold the Lamb !'"
There were some changes made in the districts. The Savannah District ceased to be, and the two cities were placed in the Augusta District. There was a mission dis- trict, called the Buck River District, to which James E. Godfrey was sent. Robert A. Steele took the St. Mary's District and went down into Florida, and Wm. Chaise the Jacksonville District, composed of the wildest part of the Wire Grass Country. Robert A. Steele, Presiding Elder of the St. Mary's District, was a most saintly young man. He had been converted in early life, and when he was twenty-eight years old he abandoned the medical profession for the pulpit. He was a man of most devoted missionary spirit, and sought to go to fields from which others shrank. He was a feeble man, and suffered much in his work, but he labored on, and with much success. He walked with God. He was fully consecrated to His service and had the testimony that he pleased Him. God's love and presence was sweetly manifest to him in his last hours, and when he was told his end was nigh, he emphatically replied, " Thank God." He died in peace, in February, 1844, at about forty years of age.
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W. W. Griffin, who was admitted at this conference, was one of those simple-hearted, earnest, though not gifted men, who do the work assigned. to them faith- fully, and who always do much more than those would think who merely see the external. Without learning or eloquence, their simple fervor, their pure lives do more than learning or eloquence without them can do. He suffered much in the last years of his life, but died in the faith.
During this year Jeremiah Norman died. His mind became affected before his death, and we have no me- moir of him in the minutes. He was a gifted, pious, lonely man. He lived unmarried, and seems to have had none near of kin to him in this land. He was a man of much more than usual mind, graces, and useful- ness.
The new Fort Gaines District, including all that sec- tion south of Fort Valley and lying west of IIonston and Pulaski to the Florida line, was laid out and James B. Payne was placed upon it. The home of the preacher was in Perry. He went eastward to the Ocmulgee River, and westward to the Chattahoochee, and thence to Florida. A part of this country, which was afterwards known as the richest in Georgia, was just being settled. The felling of the forest and the decay of the timbers had brought on a malarial fever which swept like a pestilence ; often the presiding elder would ride a whole day and find a sick family in every home. During the year there was good work done, and the presiding elder was returned the next year. It would be telling simply the oft-told story to tell of the hardships of the preachers and the presiding elders in this field. All of thein submitted to privations ; many
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of them were sick, and oftentimes one of the band of evangelists fell asleep in the home of strangers. Yet another came forward and took his vacated place. The presiding elder had his horse stolen during the year, but escaped with no other injury than the one to his slender purse.
Sidney M. Smith was on the Carrollton Mission. IIe was eminently useful, and many souls were con- verted under his ministry. Jno. W. Yarbrough and James B. Jackson were together on the large Marietta Mission, and the senior preacher wrote cheeringly of the success which had attended their labors. In Macon there was a great revival; in Milledgeville the best meeting that that city had known since 1827.
At this conference the delegates were elected to the general conference which met in Baltimore in May of the next year, 1839. The Georgia delegation consisted of six : Sam'l K. Hodges, Lovick Pierce, Ignatius A. Few, Win. J. Parks, Elijah Sinclair, and Geo. F. Pierce. The conference seems to have been an unimportant one, and though many memorials were presented from New England upon the slavery question, yet the temper of the body was so mild and conservative as to justify the hope that a division of the Church was yet in the far distance. On an appeal from Missouri, the conference went so far against the violent opposition of the New England delegation as to pass a resolution that the testimony of colored witnesses was not to be received in those States where it was not recognized in courts of law. This resolution was passed, and when Dr. W. A. Smith proposed to reconsider the motion and adopt a substi- tute, and give to conferences the privilege of making exceptions, the conference refused to adopt the substi- 15*
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tute. When the case of the Natchez Church was brought before the conference, E. R. Ames, the present Bishop, proposed to be one of a hundred to raise $1,000 for the relief of these afflicted Southern people. One can but be impressed with the tone of modera- tion, the spirit of brotherhood, which characterized the assembly. Who could have predicted that the next general conference would have been the last in which Northern men and Southern should sit together as representatives of one great body ? But the leaven was at work which was to leaven the whole body.
The Georgia Conference enters upon the second decade of its existence. Great changes had taken place in this period, and great improvements had been made. At no time had the Church been more prosperous. An abundance of laborers were in the field, the most of them raised up in the State by Methodism herself. There was a disposition to abandon that which had become unsuited to the times, and adapt the machinery of the Church to present needs. At last the whole of Georgia was occupied by the preachers. The Red man had sadly left his beautiful hunting grounds, and had gone reluctantly to the far West. Large numbers of new settlers had immigrated into Georgia, and the fer- tile lands were being rapidly filled up. The popula- tion of the State had increased from 516,823 to 691,- 392. The membership of the Church from 20,585 to 27,29S whites, and from 4,500 colored to 8,358. The five districts with seventy-six preachers had grown to eight districts, with one hundred and eleven preachers. The collections had almost entirely originated during this period, and there had been raised in the State dur- ing this last year $5,030.87 for missions, and in one
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year $2,599, for superannuated preachers, their widows and orphans. The centenary collection had been very liberal. The colleges and manual labor school had sprung into being, and the subscription to them had amounted to over $100,000. The social features of the State had undergone but little change, but that was for the better. A great financial crisis had come, and still its effect was felt all over the State, but yet the Church had prospered. Most of the very large circuits of the periods before, had given way, and the circuits were now comparatively small, though still much too large for effective working. A large number of the leading men of the Church in 1830, were no longer present. Andrew was a Bishop ; Howard, Pope, Bellah, Chappell, Darley, Winn, and Pournell were dead. Warwick, Sneed, Turner, were superannuated. Jesse Boring after years of usefulness had broken down, and was forced to take light work, but new, and enterpris- ing, and gifted men were in their places. Lovick Pierce, Thomas Samford, Win. Arnold, and Samuel K. Hodges, of the old line, remained in the field, but Talley, Parks, Glenn, Geo. F. Pierce, Payne, Anthony, Key, Lewis, Mann, were now among the leading working- men in the conference. While Jno. W. Yarsbrough, G. J. Pearce, P. P. Smith, Jno. C. Simmons, M. H. White, younger men, were doing the hard frontier work, that was demanded by the new country, which had been occupied. Up to this time, Georgia had never been without a frontier, and the Georgia Conference had held no session without appointing some of its members to the wilderness, and the opening of the Creek and Cherokee lands in Georgia, and of the whole of Florida to settlement had called for an unusua
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amount of this work. Forests were being cut down, new villages being built, and the times demanded energy and enterprise. It has been the glory of Meth- odism that her sons have never shrunk from the hard- ships of a new country, and that she has always been among the first in the newly opened land. It is this which has given her so strong a hold on the affections of the people. She did not wait for civilization to prepare the way for the Church, but the Church, going first, secured the blessings of refined life to the people.
The work was still hard. The circuits had not as yet provided for the comfort of the preachers by providing parsonages. Many of the married had homes, and some of them were necessarily remote from their work, and while the size of the circuit was reduced, the number of new appointments called for as much service from the preachers. Augusta, Savannah, Milledgeville, Athens, Columbus, Macon, Washington, are the only stations. La Grange and West Point a station together, and the rest of the State was provided with only circuit preach- ing. While there was growth in the country, in the towns the advance was not rapid. The older towns of the State had been much depleted to supply the newer. Greensboro had almost emptied itself into the lap of Columbus and La Grange, and Eatonton and Clinton into Macon, and so with the older counties. The camp meetings were still in vigorous existence, though the protracted meetings in many of the country churches rendered them less a necessity. The people were better educated, and so were the preachers. Mercer Univer- sity, Franklin College, and Emory, were well patronized, and there were high schools over the whole State.
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The land had been well prepared, and the seed well sown. The laborers were toiling for a richer harvest, and the next decade will show still greater advancement.
The next conference met in Macon, January 20, 1841, Bishop Andrew, presiding.
Twenty-five were admitted on trial; among them was Andrew Neese, who died in 1856, after sixteen years of hard and valuable work. He was a man of devoted piety, consecrated to his ministry ; acceptable and useful, wherever he went ; plain, pointed, and serip- tural in his preaching ; gentle and affable in his man- ners. He was stricken with apoplexy, and had only one interval of consciousness; while it continned he re- peated almost the whole of the twenty-first of Revela- tion.
George Bright, an earnest, gifted young man, was another of the class. He died of yellow fever, in Key West, in 1874; had travelled for nearly thirty-four years. George Bright was a striking character. He was pos- sessed of many more than ordinary gifts. He was a born controversialist. Other men may combat what they believe to be error, because they are forced into the field ; but he delighted in the fray. He was for many years on those charges where he met the most re- pulsive forms of Calvinism in their practical influence, and when church exclusiveness was the boldest in its claims, and he had made himself a master of the ques- tions at issue, and was ready to defend Arminius or at- tack Calvin, at any moment, and he did the work with a zest. He was necessarily a combatant, and fought without malice ; but those who did not know him well, attributed to bad temper what was really due to conscien- tious conviction. His health failed him in the regular
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work, and he entered the school-room. He went from Georgia to Missouri, but here his health failed him again, and after a few years beyond the Mississippi, he returned to Georgia, was transferred to the Florida Conference, was sent to Key West. Here he died in peace. George Bright was as gnarled and knotty as a live oak, but like a live oak, he had a great, sound -heart.
Win. J. Sassnett was another admitted on trial. He was the grandson of Philip Turner, one of the first Methodists in Sparta, and the youngest son of his daughter, Rhoda Sassnett. He returned from the col- lege at Midway, and began to study law with Judge Sayre. He was in the Church, but was not a Christian. A severe attack of sickness that fall brought him to Christ, and he promised God that if he spared his life, he would preach the Gospel. He sent for Dr. Pendle- ton, his attending physician, and told him what he felt to be his duty. When his family learned his purpose, he met with very fierce opposition from them, and his father firmly refused to assist his gifted boy in his mad course.
Hardy C. Culver, one of nature's noblemen, offered him a horse and money to start with. When, however, the father saw his son's determination, he relented, and consented that he should do as he wished. Ten years afterwards the father was converted, and died in the faith of the Gospel .* The determined and consecrated young man presented himself as an applicant for ad- mission into the conference, and was admitted. After one appointment in Georgia, he was transferred to
* Dr. Pendleton.
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Alabama. He was highly gifted, and the prospect of greatest usefulness spread out before him, when he was attacked by acute rheumatism, and after the disease left him, his handsome and manly form was bent almost double. He did not, however, complain nor despond, but entered the hall of the college professor. He was Professor at Oxford, the President of the La Grange Female College, and then President of the East Alabama University, at Auburn. The war closed this institution, and he returned to his farin in Hancock County, Ga. Here he remained until 1865, when, in the vigor of his life and the zenith of his fame, he died in the faith. He was delirious a part of the time of his sickness, and as his delirium passed away, he said : " Have I said anything in my deliriumn a Christian min- ister ought not to have said ?" They told him no. He answered : "Thank God."
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