USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 7
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 7
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* Dow's Journal.
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conference talked over his case, and it was decided to encourage him .* Afterwards his eccentricities brought him into disrepute with the brethren, and he travelled as a cosmopolite, preaching the doctrines of the Methodists and leaving those converted to choose their church con- nections for themselves. His visit to Georgia during this year 1802 had been of real service to the cause of Christ. At the Conference of 1803 the result of the year's work was reported. The number had largely increased, over 1,300 new members had been added during the year.
The conference met at Camden again the 6th of Jan- uary, 1803. It remained in session only three days. Stith Mead was again Presiding Elder of the Georgia District, and the old corps of preachers were again appointed to the various charges. Among the preachers this year, for the first time in Georgia, is Lewis Myers. This was his fourth year in the ministry.
Lewis Myers was a full-blooded German by descent, and he never lost his German accent, though he was an American by birth, and wrote English like an Englishman. IIe was as decided and as conscientious as a German could be, and that is saying a great deal. He had decided to be a Christian, and he was one to the end, and he had determined to be an itinerant preacher, and so he was to the end. Strong himself, he had but little sympathy for the weak or vacillating. IIis remarkable common sense made him a leader on the conference floor, and with W. M. Kennedy he shared the full confidence of his brethren when judgment was demanded. Ile travelled all kinds of work, and always
* Dow's Journal.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
did well what he did at all. He worked for twenty- eight years-one of the hardest workers the church has ever had in it. He travelled in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. He believed in Methodism, in the Methodism of his earliest love. He fought against everything opposed to it. Drunkenness, cock-fighting, duelling, were not less objects of attack than the theatre, the public show, the powdered head, or the frills and ruffles of the young ladies ; and none ever escaped him. When he was presiding elder on the Oconee District, a Methodist preacher, whom he designates as B. C., went to a scientific show, as it was called, in Sparta, where there were puppets dancing. The delinquent had not begun his breakfast the next morning, and was at family prayers, when brother Myers came to bring him to account. The preacher, according to Myers' journal, evidenced the awful depravity of the human heart by defending his course.
Mr. Monroe, then President of the United States, on a visit to Charleston, went to the theatre. Lewis Myers addressed him a letter from the Methodist parsonage, calling his attention to the sad example he was giving to the people." On the conference floor he was the ·censor. A young preacher, who had fallen captive to beauty and who had married, was sure to have Father Myers after him at conference. " A young brudder," he said in a speech, " comes to us and wishes to breach. We dell him we will dry him a year. He goes out and does bretty well ; we dell him we will dry him again. Then he gomes to ns and says, bredren, I must get mar- ried. We say, no, brudder, go breach; but he says, I
*Myers' Journal in South Carolina Advocate.
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must get married, and marry he does ; it is sight enongh to make angels weep."
He had quite a spice of humor with all his stern- ness, and his odd speeches called out a smile from the most serious congregation.
He came once to a church in Greene County, and after Saturday's preaching requested the people to stay to class, but instead of holding a class he gave them a talk to this effect : "Bredren, I dinks some dings might be mended here. The clab-poards on the house are loose-yon might nail them on and keep the rain out; the weder-boarding is ripped off-you might put dem back. The men bite tobacco and spit on the floor-a very bad habit, bredren; and altogedder things look shockling about here."* By this time the congregation were tittering, and Wm. H. C. Cone, then a young man, was so overcome by the old man's way that he had bent his head on the bench to conceal his merriment. "And you, young man, who has your head down on de bench, yon will pray for us." The prayer, we may judge, was short. He was a rigid disciplinarian, and kept things up to the line wherever he went. Although he lived for many years after he went to Effingham in compara- tive retirement, the Church never had a firmer friend; and few who marked his close economy dreamed that the old Dutchman who worked so hard, traded so closely, and lived so economically, was saving for the Church; and it was only when his will was opened that it was seen that the widows, the orphans, and the friendless were the objects for whose welfare he was toiling so hard. Old Father Myers was indeed a peculiar man,
* From W. I. Parka
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
but not many have lived who had a stronger head and a nobler heart. He was sent this year with Josias Ran- dle on the Little River Circuit. Samuel Ansley was on the Oconee Circuit. He was a man of moderate gifts, but of deep piety, who, after travelling several years, located and then re-entered the work, and died a super- annuated preacher in the Georgia Conference, after having preached for over fifty years.
There was again large increase in the membership. This year nearly 4,300 were reported in the society. From every quarter came up the same precious tidings. The Baptists and Presbyterians shared in these blessings. There were no other Christian bodies in this new State.
As the South Carolina Conference was to meet this year in Augusta, and as Asbury was to preside, he came early in December. He preached in Augusta, visited Thomas Haynes, Gartrell, and Thomas Grant ; after preaching at White Oak, he rode home with Capt. Few, whose eldest son was serious. This then was the time of the first serious impressions of that gifted man, Col. Ignatius Few, who, after having been lost in the wilds of infidelity, came to Christ in 1827, nearly twenty- five years after the time the good Bishop rode home to talk with him and pray for him. He passed rapidly through Richmond, Columbia, Lincoln, Elbert, Wilkes, Warren, and Hancock Counties. Although Asbury was near sixty years old, feeble and worn, yet he rode through all weathers, and preached every day. He came to Sparta a second time. They had a race course, but no church, so he was forced to preach at Lucas dwelling, where he had a full house; passing down into Washington County, he made a journey through it to Louisville ; here he was entertained by :
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Mr. Flournoy, a new convert, whose wife, he says, was one of the respectables; and then on to Augusta. Flournoy was a famous man, a man of violent passions, whose religious life did not continue long. He had married a member of the great Cobb family, whose saintliness of life would have made a beautiful story for the early age. She, amid many trials, lived the most con- secrated life and died a most triumphant death. She was the grandmother of Rev. H. J. Adams, of the N. G. conference.
The conference mnet January 4, 1804. Dr. Coke was present with Asbury. One man alone lives who was present at that conference-Lovick Pierce ; he was but a boy from Barnwell, S. C., but even then a warm- hearted Methodist.
It met at the house of Peter Cantalou, on Ellis Street .* The boundaries of Georgia are again changed and the frontier-line moved farther back, calling for changes in the arrangement of the work. The stu- dent of church history, to clearly understand the work, must make himself acquainted with the physical and political changes which passed over the State. The settlements in Georgia were made in a somewhat peculiar way, and one part of the State was com- paratively old before another was settled. The first settlements were from the ocean to the Altamaha and Ogeechee. Then, in 1773, Sir James Wright bought from the Indians the country between the Ogeechee and the Oconee. Here, for over thirty years, was the boundary of the State. In 1802 a treaty was made for lands from the Oconee to the Apalachee, and now, in
*Asbury, Journal.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
1804, the country lying between the Oconee and the Ocmulgee was purchased. Georgia had until 1837 always a frontier, and in the new purchase there was the features of a fresh settlement. The log-cabins of the older sections were now only removed from Wilkes, Warren, and Hancock, to the new counties of Jasper, Jones, and Morgan. Since the year 1793, when the feeble Georgia Conference was merged into the South Carolina, almost eleven years had gone. A great change had passed over the whole country-a change resulting from the invention of .the cotton-gin. Previous to its invention, there was little hope of making fortunes in Georgia. The rice-planters on the coast of the Caro- linas and of Georgia, and the few indigo-planters who were left, made something for export ; but, with the exception of a few hogsheads of tobacco made on the fresh lands and shipped to Europe, there was nothing made in Georgia that was not for home use. Corn, wheat, cattle, pork, there was in great abundance ; but these could not be transported, and if sold made but a poor return ; a little cotton was made for home con- sumption. The lint was separated from the seed by the busy fingers of the family ; but now Eli Whitney and Nathan Lyon about the same time brought out the machines so much needed. The lands were fresh ; the shipowners of New England States, about to lose the profitable slave trade, were hurrying cargoes of Afri- cans to Savannah and Charleston. The result of this was large immigration, and the rapid opening of large plantations. Good schools sprang up all over the older sections of the State.
The habits of the rough pioneers were becoming gradually more gentle. When Methodism began her
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work, there were not five hundred Christian people in the State; now there were nearly 5,000 in the Methodist Church alone.
The people were, many of them, still rude and uncul- tivated. Judge Longstreet, in his "Georgia Scenes," Gov. Gilmer in his "Georgians," and Judge Andrews do not present an exaggerated picture of those times. Asbury says of the state of things in 1803 that the great hinderance to the work of God in Georgia was Sabbath markets, rum, races, and rioting. "In those days," says Elisha Perryman, an old Baptist, " almost everybody was in the habit of drinking; young and old, rich and poor, Christian and sinner, all would drink, and many of them get drunk into the bargain." The Methodist Church now covered the whole State. In its short history up to this time there had been two great revivals and one period of deep depression.
New territory is now to be opened. New fields are to be laid ont, and the same battle with the hardships of the first days of a country is to be fought over again.
The conference concluded its session without any- thing of special interest, and Mead again took charge of his corps of evangelists, and went forth to his soul- cheering work.
They were an earnest, gifted body of men, and the field was white to the harvest. The revival infineuce still continued, and there were over 600 additional members reported to the next conference. Mead, having done most excellent work, was now spending his last year in Georgia, but he was training a body of young men, who were to do the work he had begun, after he had left them. We have no other particulars
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IN FLORIDA AND GEORGIA, 1785-1865.
than those which the minutes give, and a darkness as deep and as deplorable rests over the history of other churches. Jesse Mercer was in his strength. The sons of Abraham Marshall were still at work, and Cummings and Dokes were doing good service for the Presbyterians ; but while this we know, of more than this we are ignorant. 5 *
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CHAPTER V.
1805-1812.
CONFERENCE OF 1805-LOVICK AND REDDICK PIERCE-JOSEPH TARPLEY -SPARTA AND MILLEDGEVILLE CIRCUITS-APALACHEE CIRCUIT- LOVICK PIERCE ON HIS FIRST GEORGIA CIRCUIT-W. M. KENNEDY- THE OHOOPEE CIRCUIT-ASBURY AGAIN IN GEORGIA-CONFERENCE OF 1806 AT SPARTA-JESSE LEE-FIRST SOCIETY IN SAVANNAH- SPARTA CAMP-MEETING JUDGE STITH-MRS. DR. BIRD JAMES RUSSELL-THE TOMBIGBEE MISSION-WM. ARNOLD-GENERAL CON- FERENCE OF 1808-JOS. TRAVIS-BRO. BOB MARTIN, OR SHOUTING UNDER DIFFICULTIES-ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF 1808, AT LIBERTY CHAPEL-WM. MCKENDREE-WM. CAPERS-LOVICK PIERCE OM HIS FIRST DISTRICT-JOSIAS RANDLE-HILLIARD JUDGE-WM. REDWINE-ROBERT L. EDWARDS-OSBORN ROGERS-EPPS TUOK- ER-JOHN COLLINGSWORTH-CONFERENCE OF 1809-JOHN MOVENN- JNO. S. FORD-MILLEDGEVILLE A STATION-WHITMAN C. HILL- CONFERENCE OF 1811-GENERAL REVIEW.
THE Conference of 1805 met at Charleston, January 1st, Bishop Asbury presiding.
The Bishop preached on " Walk in wisdom towards them which are without."*
He had a practical proof of the value of the injunc- tion, for he was forbidden by the city authorities to hold prayer-meetings with the blacks before sunrise, and to continue services later than 9 o'clock at night. This was an order tyrannical enough, and inexcusable enough, but one which had resulted from Dr. Coke's course with reference to slavery.
The Georgia work was now divided into two districts. The new territory was placed in the Oconee, and Samuel
* Journal.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
Cowles was made presiding elder; the older territory in the Ogeechee, and Josias Randle was placed in charge. The Oconee District extended westward from the Ogee- chee to the Indian Nation, the Ogeechee from the Savannah to the Ogeechee River.
At this conference, Reddick and Lovick Pierce were admitted on trial ; Reddick was twenty-two, and Lovick not quite twenty years old.
Reddick was sent as junior preacher on the Little River Circuit, Georgia; Lovick on the Great Pedee, in South Carolina.
There was a striking contrast between the two broth- ers. Reddick was vigorous in body as well as vigorous in mind. He was strong, brave, daring. He rather enjoyed than recoiled from perils. In boyhood, his brother says, he delighted in tales of Indian wars and weird stories of ghostly appearances.
He cared little for refinement of culture, never aimed at polish, nor sought for elegance of manner or speech. He sought only for strong, clear arguments, for burning words, and for unction of soul. Lovick was, on the contrary, gentle as a woman, shrinking, sensitive, and timid. His desire for culture of the highest kind was intense, and his taste was for all the refinements of life. Reddick would have made a noble worker in granite, but Lovick would have been Michael Angelo, and worked only in marble. Reddick was a great man, but his greatness was to be known only by a few ; Lovick was destined to a renown as wide as the domain of Methodism. The two brothers had possessed no lit- erary advantages in the backwoods in which they were born ; but, full of lofty heroism and a sublime deter- mination to work for Jesus, they come now to the
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conference for their first appointments. They were born in Halifax County, in North Carolina, but were
brought up in Barnwell District, S. C. Under the preaching of James Jenkins, they were at the same time awakened, and when Thomas Darley, the year afterwards, was preacher in charge of that circuit, they
joined the society. Reddick was sent to Little River
this year, and the next to the Sparta Circuit. In 1807, he followed his younger brother on the Augusta sta- tion, and was then sent to Columbia, S. C. Colum- bia was at that time a small, but an important town ; it was the capital of the State, and the State University was there. The Methodists had a small chapel, and were few and humble. They afforded fine sport for the mischievous young bloods who were in the college there, and they made full use of their opportunities for mis- chief. After annoying the congregation in every way they could think of, one night they turned a live goose into the church, while the congregation were at prayer. Young Pierce reported the culprits to the chancellor. This officer calmly heard him, and promised that he should have a hearing before the faculty, and should have an opportunity to prove his case. The young men sent him a note that it would be at the peril of his life if he should appear at the campus on the day fixed for trial ; but on that day the intrepid young preacher was there. IIe stated his case. The young man selected by his companions as their champion made a brave speech against Pope Pierce, as he called him, but the trustees and faculty ended the matter by notifying the students that any future molestation of the Methodists
* From personal conversation with Reddiok Pierce.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
should be followed by prompt expulsion from college; and the worshippers were no more disturbed.
Reddick Pierce was a man of great power in the pul- pit. Dr. Lovick Pierce says he had known scores to fall senseless as Reddick preached. One day he went to a Baptist church. An opportunity to join the Church was given, and one and another told an experience. The preacher then invited any brother who desired to do so to speak. Reddick rose, told his own heart's story, and began to exhort. The result was as usual: when he exhorted, many fell, overwhelmed by their emotions.
He was especially strong in the Calvinistic controversy of those days, and to the last scarcely ever preached a sermon without dealing some hard blows at that system of theology. The present generation, when there is so little of the hyper-Calvinism of seventy years ago, and when religious controversy is at such discount, are not aware of the intense feelings of the two parties at that time, and of the constant warfare waged. The young preachers studied the polemical books of Wesley and Fletcher, and each felt that he had not done his duty unless he had assailed what he believed the God-dishon- oring doctrine of an unconditional decree. Young Pierce located in 1812, and afterwards returned to the work in 1822, and in it he died. He was very deaf early in his life, and grew so perfectly so that he could only com- mune with his friends by the aid of writing. He was a very fine talker, and a man of most impressive appear- ance. His old age, when not visiting his children, was spent under the roof of his friend, Jacob Slowman, in Barnwell, S. C.
The Bishop visited Georgia this year, but do not seem to have met with anything of special i
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he makes no important record of it in his journal. The members in the church are about the same as in the year before, and the general revival interest had somewhat abated.
The conference met in Charleston in January, 1806. The number of circuits was increased, and for the first time the Sparta and Milledegville Circuits appear. Divided between the Apalachee, the Sparta and the Milledgeville Circuits was that fine country between the Oconee and the Ocmulgee, which had just been opened to settlement. It comprised large and fertile sections, and was rapidly peopled. Twiggs, Jones, Baldwin, Mor- gan and Jasper Counties were then the frontier counties. Samuel Cowles and Josias Randle were the presiding elders.
Joseph Tarpley was on the Apalachee Circuit. This was his second year in itinerancy. He was a man of fine capacity, and was very useful. He had a large frame, a fine face, and a strong, clear voice, which he managed with great skill .* IIe was a pious man and a laborious one. After years of active labor in the ininistry, he married a daughter of General Stewart, and located. Ile entered into mercantile business, but was unfortunate in it, and lost everything except his religion.
The Sparta Circuit appears for the first time. Al- though there had been regular preaching in the county of Ilancock for several years preceding, the first Meth- odist church building in Sparta was erected this year. This supplied the people of the village with a place of worship until 1824, when a larger and finer church
* Travis.
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
was built .* This building, much improved, is still used. Philip Turner was the first class-leader. He was a Maryland Methodist, and, in connection with John Lucas, was the chief support of the church there in the early days.
Lovick Pierce was sent to the new Apalachee Circuit with Joseph Tarpley. This circuit included Greene, Clarke, and Jackson. He was but little over twenty years old, and was timid as a fawn. His sensibilities were unusually acute, and his aspirations of the noblest and highest kind. Ile had an exalted idea of the respon- sibilities and of the lofty demands of his ministry, and a painful sense of his own deficiencies. His circuit threw him into the presence of people as highly culti- vated as any in Georgia. Hope Hull, Gen. Stewart, Gen. Merriwether, Henry Pope, Henry Gilmer, John Crutchfield, and men of that class were among his hear- ers, and the new State University in his Circuit. He had been in the ministry only one year. He had to preach every day, and had no time for careful study ; but, as water from the mountain-top only waits its time to seek that height which is its birthright, so, with such a mind as his, circumstances might for a moment keep it depressed-but only for a moment ; rise it must, rise it would. He was a born preacher, and he was in a school to make one. Cicero says in his " De Oratore " that re- peated practice is worth more to an orator than all rules of art. This is eminently true of the pulpit, and he had to preach every day. To be thrown upon one's own resources has made many a man, and books. have spoiled not a few who might have made them for them-
* Dr. Pendleton, sketch.
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selves, but who learned to depend servilely on the minds of others. Lovick Pierce had few books but the Bible; but, with the Bible and with a rich Christian experience, what man is unfurnished. He began his Georgia min- istry this year a plain, untutored, but highly gifted boy. He never left the State for any length of time afterwards. A few appointments he had outside of it, but his home was always in it, save for one year. We have but to introduce him now. His history is largely our history-our history his history. For over seventy years the life of Georgia Methodism and of Lovick Pierce move on together. Two generations and more are gone since he came to Georgia in 1806. A few old mnen may remember, when they were children, to have heard the good and gifted young circuit-rider, who rude the Apalachee Circuit with Joseph Tarpley, preach won- derful sermons; but they are few. He left his home in South Carolina to travel a circuit which led him to the very wigwam of the Indian, and without a teacher, to secure by constant diligence that knowledge for which he had such craving appetite. Hope Hull, whose criti- cism the young preacher so feared, was at Hull's Meet- ing-house to hear him, and as from beneath his great overhanging eyebrows, his piercing eye fell upon Lovick Pierce, he saw a man who was to bless the Church, and he took him to his home and his heart. When ITull died, twelve years after this, young Dr. Pierce, then in the brightness of his fame, preached the funeral sermon of the old hero.
Another young man who was to do good work for the church, principally in Carolina, came this year to Brond River Circuit. This was W. M. Kennedy, the father of Dr. F. M. Kennedy, editor of the Southern
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
Christian Advocate. He was short and stout, had a fine eye and a fine complexion. He was remarkable for his strong common sense and his deep piety. Full of genial humor and buoyancy, he was a favorite every- where, and his fine judgment made him a most valuable assistant to the Bishop as a presiding elder. He trav- elled only one year in Georgia at this period, and with exception of one term in Augusta, his life was spent in labor in North and South Carolina, and to these States his history properly belongs.
The faithful Randle is placed on the Oconee District again, and Britton Capel on the Ogeechee. Two new changes are made this year : the Ohoopee Circuit and the Savannah Station.
· To the west of Savannah, lying south of the Central Railway, is an immense area of land, which is known as the Wire-Grass Country. The lands are not fertile, and, till within a few years, being off all lines of popular travel, have been little visited. A stock-raising country, it is thinly inhabited even now ; but, seventy years ago, the stock-raisers in the wilds lived at long distances apart. There were no schools ; there were no churches. At this time perhaps there were three-fourths of the people who had never heard a sermon. To these pioneer settlements lying on the Ohoopee, the Alta- maha, the Ocmulgee, and the Oconee Rivers, including a dozen counties, and equal to a German duchy in size, Angus McDonald was sent as the first missionary. .
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