USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 4
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 4
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but was not converted for some time. After he heard the Methodists, many of the difficulties which had been in the way of his happy conversion were removed. He gave up his Calvinism and soon after joined in society with his wife. He was then living with his father, and was a well-to-do fariner. The Grants soon built a church, the first in Georgia ; but before the church was built the conference met at their house. The second in Georgia was held there. In 1791 he entered into mer- cantile business. He carried tobacco and other farm products to Savannah .and exchanged them for West India produce. His business prospered and he began to enlarge it. IIe shipped his produce direct from Sa- vannah to Liverpool. In 1803 he went to New York. The journey was three months and three days long. ยท When he was in New York he found a pious Quaker who kept a boarding-house, and made his home with him. IIe sought out the only society of Methodists in New York, then meeting in John Street, and had sweet Christian intercourse with them. In one of his visits he found that they were just completing a meeting-house which cost the immense sum of $11,000. God greatly prospered him in his business, but he was not injured by it.
He was a true friend to the itinerant preacher, and kept a room in his house known as the Prophet's Cham- ber ; in a bureau drawer he kept clothing already made, fitted for short men, long men, fat men, and lean men, 80 that any preacher who reached his house cold and wet could change his apparel. After the opening of the new country east of the Ocmulgee, he established a store in Randolph, now Jasper County, and after his first wife's death and his second marriage, he removed to Monti-
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
cello. Here he was very active in church work, and bemoaned the sadly dead state of the Church. In 1827 the revival fire which burned all over the State reached Monticello and the community was greatly blessed. IIe had now almost retired from the world and was wait- ing for his change. He made his will, and left a hand- some legacy to the Church. This bequest was divided between the South Carolina and Georgia Conferences, after his death. The share of the Georgia Conference was $1,500 and sundry lots of land.
Few laymen in Georgia were more cultivated, liberal and pious than Thomas Grant. He was of that small group in Wilkes who gave all their influence and much of their wealth to assist a struggling church. He died in great peace in 1828, and Dr. Lovick Pierce preached his funeral discourse.
David Merriwether * was a Welshman in his ances- try. His family had been a leading and wealthy one in Virginia, and when George Mathews, afterwards Gov- ernor, purchased largely of Georgia lands and removed to Georgia, David Merriwether came with him. He became a Methodist in 1787, and a conference was held at his house more than once. He had been a leading man in the State, and he became one in the Church. He was connected by marriage with Hope Hull and John Andrew, and although he was in public life, President of the Senate, and United States Commissioner, when the Methodists were very humble, and although he had large wealth when the Methodists were very poor, he was always a bold, simple-hearted member of the Church. IIe removed to Athens, and was one of the first members
* Gilmer's Georgians.
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of the Society there, and died peaceful after reaching a good old age. He left a family, who have preserved and transmitted his virtnes and his Methodism.
Philip Mathews had already travelled one year, and was now with John Crawford on the Savannah Circuit. He travelled but a few years longer. After having been stationed in Georgetown, S. C., he withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal, and joined the more recently organized Protestant Episcopal Church. Mr. Asbury mentions in his journal that a friend in Scriven County showed him a letter from Mr. Mathews-evident- ly Philip Mathews-in which he said Mr. Wesley was convinced of Asbury's iniquity. This iniquity was probably a failure to recognize the merits of IIammett and Mathews. Mathews settled in Georgetown, S. C., and Travis makes this mention of him: " An Episcopal clergyman, Philip Mathews, once a Meth- odist preacher, attended one of my prayer-meetings. We had a gracious time. Several lay prostrate on the floor, speechless and apparently lifeless. The parson went about, feeling first the pulse of one and then of another; finally he came to me and said, 'Mr. Travis, I want you to pray for me.' 'Well,' I said, ' kneel down here, and I will pray for you.' ' Oh,' said he, ' I want you to do it privately.' We know nothing more of his his- tory. The Savannah Circuit probably included the counties of Scriven, Effingham, Chatham, Bryan, Bullock, and Liberty.
Ilope Hull was appointed to Savannah Town. Of his stay there we have given a full account in our chap- ter on Methodism in the cities. This was a sad year and the beginning of sadder ones. There was decline everywhere. The zealous young preachers were neither
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
old enough, nor strong enough, for the burden. The religious reaction had begun, and it continued for near- ly ten years. Hull had been unwisely taken from the field in which he was reaping so grand a harvest, and sent where there was no hope of accomplishing any- thing. No wonder he writes to John Andrews : "My soul has been among lions." Then, too, the storm of controversy was raging. The Baptists and Presbyte- rians were Calvinists, and they had strong men to de- fend their views. The Methodists were Arminians; and Pelagian and Unitarian are not now names more odious to Evangelical Christians, than Arminian was in the last century. There was, on the side of the Cal- vinists, Marshall, Bottsford, Mercer, Father Cummings, and others who were strong men, and the Methodist preachers were young and perhaps not fully equipped for the battle. Asbury found the controversy raging and deprecated it. He thought we had better work to do. He came on his annual visit in the spring of this year. He rode through the Savannah swamp to a Brother H.'s probably in Scriven County, and after preaching to a congregation of four hundred, went thence to Old Church, and thence to Waynesboro. He met here an intelligent and hospitable Jew, named Henry, who took him home with him, and with whom he read Hebrew till a late hour. While here he heard heavy tidings, probably of Beverly Allen's fall in South Caro- lina, which depressed him much ; but he left all with the Lord, and joining Bishop Coke, they went together to the seat of the conference. It was at Scott's. Scott's was a new meeting-house in Wilkes County, not very far from Merriwether's and Grant's, in the same section. .
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This was the first visit of Bishop Coke to Georgia. He was a Welshman by birth, well-born, well-bred, and well-educated ; for a while he was a skeptic, then he was an unconverted curate convinced of the truth of Christianity, but by no means a Christian ; then he was a warm-hearted Gospel preacher, and because he was so, he lost his curacy. Hle attached himself to Mr. Wesley, who valued him highly, and as we have seen, Mr. Wesley sent him to America. He was very decided, and almost rash in his character-one who did not understand America, or the Americans-one whose restless spirit forbade his being confined in any single field. He loved America, but he did not suit it, and the American preachers soon found that his absence from America was a greater blessing than his presence, and he spent his last active year in a work which he did suit, the great mission work of the Wesleyan Church. Few men have spared themselves less, and few men have ever lived whose souls were nobler than that of Thomas Coke.
We found, says Asbury at conference, that the peace with the Indians, and the prosperous trade with them which followed the new settlements in Greene, and Hancock, and Clark, the buying of slaves, had so engrossed the mind of the people that the preachers had not had the success they hoped for. Despite an increase of the Savannah River Circuit, there was a decrease of near 200 members in the State. Rich- ard Ivy took the district again, and John Andrew and Hardy Herbert the Washington Circuit. Hope Hull has Burke once more. Among the new laborers introduced into the field was HIardy Herbert. He was quite a young man from North Carolina, one who has
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
been pious from his childhood. Ile travelled one year with the saintly Isaac Smith, and another with Thomas Humphries, and now Bishop Asbury brought him to Georgia and placed him with Andrew on the Washing- ton Circuit. Hull writes to Andrew : "Take care of dear brother Herbert, for my sake, for Christ's sake, and for his own sake." He seems to have been exceed- ingly lovable and highly gifted. The next year Bishop Asbury took him with him to Virginia, and stationed him in Winchester. His strength gave way, and he located, married, and died in Norfolk, Va., when he was but twenty-five years old
In the spring of 1792, Asbury came once more, entering Georgia from Barnwell District into Scriven County, and thence through Burke County northward. He passed through Waynesboro, and attempted to preach. He left the village in no good humor with it, saying: "Let preachers or people catch me here till things are mended and bettered." The next day, Sun- day, he spent in prayer, burdened with the weight of the Church. The preachers were leaving the field. He rode on up the country to White Oak, in Columbia County. The weather was cold, the houses were open, and from seven o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock in the evening he was forced to ride before he could break his fast. The home in which he was housed was not comfortable, nor were the people reli- gious. He simply says, "I have had my trials this even- ing." The snow fell the next day, but he rode on to Washington, where conference met. Bishop Asbury in his journal states that the conference met in Wash- ington. There was no church in Washington for nearly forty years after this, of which we can find any men-
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tion, and the conference must have been held in the neighborhood, at Coke's Chapel, as the next year the Bishop preached for the first time in Washington. There was, he says, great sifting, and one member of the body was suspended." The already depleted ranks lost two of its best laborers, for Hope Hull went with the Bishop as his travelling companion, and Hardy Herbert went to take an appointment in Virginia. Ivy is for the fourth and last year on the district. Jonathan Jackson came to Georgia and took the place of John Andrew, while Andrew located, to return to the work no more. Jackson was from North Carolina. IIe was, says Mood, a very son of thunder, dealing out the terrors of the Law until the wicked would almost flee from the house. IIe remained in Georgia only one year, then returned to South Carolina, and thence to Virginia, where he travelled a district reaching far beyond the Alleghanies. He came again to South Carolina, where he was honorably located. Travis, who knew him well, says that while his preaching talents were not brilliant, his sermons were always calculated to do good. IIe was a man of great holiness, and when the Lord came he found his lamp trimmed and burning.t
George Clark took his first appointment this year. Ile travelled three circuits in Georgia and then located. Hle was the first preacher on the banks of the St. Mary's. After his location he lived in Union District, South Carolina. IIe was a man of considerable wealth, but one of great plainness of dress and manner. IIis goodness was unquestioned, and he did much for the Church. He
* See Journal.
t Methodism in Charleston.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
lived to an advanced age. Two new circuits were formed, the Elbert and the Oconee. The Oconee was served by John Clark. "This," says James Jenkins, who travelled it the next year, " was a two weeks' cir- cuit, extending from the Sweet Water iron-works, in Warren County, to the banks of the Oconee, then the frontier." The lower part of Greene, all of Hancock, and a part of Washington and Warren, must have been included in it. The next year there was one meeting- house, mentioned by Jenkins, Jackson's Meeting-House, but this year the work was just laid out. Hancock County had not, as yet, been separated from Greene and Washington, and Clark's work was in these counties. The country was a fertile one, but the fact that the Indians were just across the river made it a perilous one to travel in. There was peace then, but no man knew how long it would continue. The Elbert Circuit was separated from that of Wilkes, and contained 186 meinbers. This county had been laid out from Wilkes two years before, and it was one of the most thickly populated in the State. This then was the state of the work up to the Conference of 1773, when Georgia was connected with South Carolina in one conference. The conference met in Washington again, Bishop Asbury having crossed the river at Augusta, and riding directly to Haynes, and thence to Washington. The brethren decided to unite the two conferences, and after a session of great love, they ended the sitting. He returned to South Carolina, by turning his course from Haynes, by Buckhead in Burke, on to Savannah. He visited Ebenezer and the Orphan House of Whitefield, and preached in Savannah. This city then had about 500 houses of all sorts, and he supposed about 2,000 inhabit-
:
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ants. There was a Lutheran church in it and a Presby- terian. The Goshen Church, in Effingham, was offered to Asbury by Mr. Berginan, the pastor at Ebenezer, on condition that he would have the pulpit supplied once in two or three weeks, on Sunday. This session of the Georgia Conference was the last held for nearly forty years.
James Jenkins came this year to the Oconee Circuit. He was in the second year of his ministry and was now twenty-eight years old. He lived for many years after this, and continued in the local and travelling ministry all the days of his life. He was a stern man, who be lieved the world needed more rebuke than comfort; one who was possessed of great fearlessness and a most unbending will, and who allowed nothing to cause him to swerve from what he believed was the true path, and who demanded the same steadiness of others. Sub- ject to great depression, assailed by fierce temptation, neither his words nor his manner indicated that he basked in sunlight. He was the bold denouncer of sin, and most earnestly proclaimed what he believed to be the penalties of a life of sin. IIis history properly belongs to South Carolina, and a full sketch of him will be a graphic chapter in that history. We can, however, take the liberty to tell again the story so touchingly told by Bishop Capers, in his autobiography, of his first en- counter with him. He was at Jenkins's house his first year, in 1809.
" Well, have they sent you to us for our preacher ?"
" Yes, sir."
" What, you ! and the egg-shell not dropped off of you yet ? Lord have mercy upon us! and who have they sent in charge ?"
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
" No one but myself, sir."
" What, you ! by yourself? You in charge of the cir- cuit ? Why, what is to become of the circuit ?- the Bishop had just as well sent nobody. What can you do in charge of the circuit ?"
" Very poorly, I fear, sir; but the Bishop thought you would advise me."
" So, so. I suppose I am to take charge of the cir- cuit for you, and you are to do what I tell you."
" I would be very glad, sir, if you would."
"Did ever! What ! I, a local preacher, take charge of the circuit ? And is it that you have come here for ? How can I take charge of it? no! no! But I can see that you do it; such a charge as it will be for these days-the Discipline goes for nothing."
Of course the young timid preacher cowered under these merciless blows of the well-meaning but erring old man. The next time he came he received another flagel- lation ; but that night he heard the dear old wife remon- strating with her husband for his severity. "Why, Betsy, child," he said, " don't you know I love Billy as well as yon do, and I talk to him so because I love him?" Billy, as he called him, was no longer afraid, and the next morning disarmed the old preacher by tell- ing him what he had heard the night before, and changed the frown into a laugh. But this was years after; he was now a young man and was now alone on the Oconee Circuit ; it probably included Hancock, a part of Greene and Washington, and was travelled in two weeks.
With this year's work well done, Richard Ivy leaves Georgia never more to return to it. In two years he is in his grave. He did noble work for the young State.
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He was the Great Heart of his day, and he braved all the perils of this frontier, and bore all the privations his office called for. His district extended from the Savan- nah to the Oconee, from the St. Mary's to the moun- tains. When he began his work there was not a single church building in his district. Ile had seen the mem- bership of the societies quintupled. He had extended his line-a skirmish line, it was true-from below Savannah to the borders of the Indian nation. He had only young men, almost without education, to rely upon to aid him. He had no mission funds, no reserve of ministerial force to bring up; never had man a more difficult task, not often has man done the work better.
Reuben Ellis was his successor on the district. He had, besides, five appointments in South Carolina. His district extended from Charleston in South Carolina, to Greene County in Georgia-from the Saluda to the Altamaha. Reuben Ellis was one of the first and one of the most faithful of the early preachers. Save the record that the minutes present of his fields of labor, and the short memoir they gave of him, we know very little of one whose life must have been full of stirring incidents. He was born in North Carolina, and began to travel during the Revolution in 1779. IIe preached in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Caro- lina. When presiding elders were first appointed in 1785, he was one-first in North Carolina, in the east and west of this State, among pine forests, swamps and mountains ; then on a district extending from Salis- bury to Columbia, S. C., with only four circuits in it. Hle mapped out the work in the frontier country of upper South Carolina, and after four years of hard work there he was sent to Georgia. Le travelled this
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
laborious district, including nearly all of two States, but one year, and then returned to the scene of his early labors in Virginia and Maryland. In Baltimore, in 1796, he died. His old comrade in arms, his brother beloved, Richard Ivy, went home a few months before him. They joined the conference together, travelled the saine circuits and the saine districts, were alike holy and laborions, and entered into their reward near the same time. In personal appearance they were unlike. Ellis was very large in body, but feeble in constitution. The Bishop, who had been his bosom friend for twenty years, said of him : " It is a doubt whether there be one left in the connection higher, if equal to him in stand- ing, piety, and usefulness." He began his work in Georgia under many difficulties. The Bishop was un- able to supply the field with laborers as it should have been supplied. He could only send such men as he had-James Tolleson was one of the best of them. He came from South Carolina to the Washington Circuit. He remained in Georgia for but one year. He was a man of fine promise, who filled several of the most impor- tant stations with "dignity and diligence." He died in great peace in Portsmouth, Va.
From this time, for nearly forty years, there is no separate meeting of the Georgia Conference, and this affords a proper point from which to survey the first year of the Church in Georgia.
The Methodist preachers have now * occupied this territory for nine years. They have met everywhere obstacles of serious kind, but they have had a wonder- ful success. We have alluded to the odium attached
* Minutes.
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to them for being Arminians, and the distrust of their patriotism, and the needless difficulties Dr. Coke's great imprudence in denouncing slavery, before he had been three months in America, had cansed. Then there was their mode of doing things-their revival services, their class meetings, their love feasts with closed doors, and their stern rebukes of all sin. The membership, when they began to work in 1786, was next to nothing, and, despite all the difficulties in the way, Methodist soci- eties now dot the State from the very door of the Creeks and Cherokees to the cities on the sea-coast, from Florida to the Blue Ridge. The work has been outlined, the important points seized, and though the force is small, yet it will hold its own against all comers. There were some things, however, decidedly in the favor of the preachers. The people were starving for the Word; they were literally without God in the world. The very peculiarities of the preachers brought out congre- gations to hear them. They wore strait-breasted coats, broad-brimmed hats ; they looked as no other men, and preached like no others; they often stamped and screamed, wept, threatened, exhorted, and invited. All felt that they were deeply in earnest. The power of the Spirit attended their labors, and many who came to scoff remained to pray.
Yet how heroic was the endurance demanded ! There was probably not a bridge in Georgia; there was not a turnpike; in many whole counties there was not a pane of glass ; in some not a saw-mill nor a framed building. Pole-cabins, with bebanbed cracks, a dirt floor, and a stick-and-dirt chimney, where one room furnished living room and sleeping room, were the honses of the people. As we have seen, the circuit
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
preacher found no churches ready for him, often- times no preaching places selected, not a single mem- ber of the Society. He came into a section, he sought out the kind-hearted settler, and left an appoint- ment for that day two weeks at his cabin, and on that day he came. A cabin full of the neighbors was there. The men were dressed in hunting-shirts, and either barefooted or with Indian moccasins on; the women in the plainest garb of country-made stuff-nearly all of them simple-hearted and ignorant. The preacher preached, souls were convicted, and after a fearful struggling there was a thorough conversion. The preacher finished his sermon, and on a puncheon the plain food, simply " lye hominy" and bear or deer meat, was set. After dinner he must ride on, for there was another appointment miles beyond. A creek was in the way-he swam it; he had no road, but a blazed pathway through the woods led him to the settlement. Ile received no money, for the people had none. Ilis clothing was of plainest material, often patched, often ragged. Bishop George says Dunwody said, "if our poverty was our purity, some of us onght to be purified ere long." I noticed, said the preacher, a large slit in the Bishop's own coat, and this was thirty years after this time. It was not often he received even his small allowance. Henry Smith, of Maryland, came to con- ference in these days with four dollars as his total yearly receipts. Some of the preachers had a small patrimony, which they spent in the work. When a man married, he located ; when he died, they sold his horse and books, and paid his burial expenses; and when he wore out, he wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood, cherished kindly by his brethren who were able to shelter him.
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The Georgia people were nearly all poor at this period-the Methodists the poorest of the Georgians; and while in Wilkes and in some of the eastern coun- ties there were some families of wealth and influence who adhered to the Methodists, the general state of the country and the Church was in 1793 such as we have tried to picture it.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
CHAPTER IV.
CONFERENCE OF 1795-PHILIP BRUCE-DECLINE IN THE CHURCH, AND ITS CAUSE -SAMUEL COWLES - FIRST GENERAL CONFERENCE - ENOCH GEORGE - CONFERENCE OF 1798- BENJAMIN BLANTON - JESSE LEE IN GEORGIA-GEORGE DOUGHERTY- CHARLES TAIT- RALPH BANKS-ALEXANDER MCCAINE-CONFERENCE 1799 STITH MEAD - JOHN GARVIN - CONFERENCE 1800 - BRITTON CAPEL - NICOLAS SNETHEN-CONFERENCE 1801 AND 1802-J. H. MELLARD- GREAT REVIVAL -CAMP-MEETINGS - CONFERENCE 1803 - LORENZO DOW-LEWIS MYERS-LARGE INCREASE-CONFERENCE 1804.
THE United Conferences made one, and known there- after as the South Carolina Conference, met in the forks of Broad River, Abbeville District, South Carolina, January 1, 1794.
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