USA > Florida > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 8
USA > Georgia > The History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida: From 1785 to 1865 > Part 8
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The preacher had his own circuit to make ; he had be- fore him a prospect gloomy enough to daunt any heart. The settlements were not, as they are in many sections, in groups ; but there were single houses, miles distant from any others. The paths through the wire-grass
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were only discovered by the blazes on the trees. The houses were simply of pine logs, with the roof, by no means water-tight, of clap-boards weighted down with poles. The people had no property save cows and sheep. There were neither wheat-fields, nor flour-mills, and the corn was either made into hominy, or ground with a hand-mill into grits. The marriage-tie was dis -. regarded ; the Sabbath was unknown. This is a true, if not a flattering picture of the Wire-Grass Country seventy years ago, when the Methodists began their work in it. The Primitive Baptists have a stronghold in that section now, and probably were in the country then. McDonald does not seem to have had much suc- cess there, and the Ohoopee was dropped from the list of circuits at the next conference, and does not appear again for several years.
Bishop Asbury came to Georgia in November, reach- ing Augusta on Saturday the 15th.
On Monday he rode out to the home of Thomas IIaynes, and remained with him till Saturday. He made a compilation of the number of societies in Georgia, and found them to be one hundred and thirty. Ile estimated that during the year the Methodists preached to 130,000 different people.
He went through Wilkes, Warren, Jefferson, and then back to Wilkes and to Petersburg, where he met Father Cummings and Mr. Dokes, Presbyterian ministers, the first of which we find mention in upper Georgia. Then to see Judge Tait and Ralph Banks; and on the 15th he visited Hope IInll, and first visited the new village of Athens. At. Hull's house he gave a lecture. On Sunday he preached at Pope's Chapel, and was assis- ted in the other services by Ilope IIull, Stith Mead,
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and Moses Mathews ; then to Gen. Stewart, and through Greene County to Sparta, the seat of the conference.
The conference met in Sparta late in December, 1806. It held its sessions in the house of John Lucas. Although Sparta was the extreme western appointment in the conference, yet the preachers came from the sea- board of North Carolina to attend the session.
George Dougherty was there. This village had been in his second circuit seven years before, and now he came to it a dying man. He was far gone in consump- tion. There had evidently been some cowardice shown in times of pestilence, and Dougherty introduced a res- olution, which was passed, that if a Methodist preacher deserted his post in times like that, he should travel no more among us.
Asbury brought before the conference his favorite scheme for a delegated general conference, which should elect another Bishop. This frontier conference was very much in favor of it, but it was not pleasing to the more powerful central conferences, and was not adopted.
At this session the plan for a benevolent society-the Society of Special Relief-was adopted at Asbury's suggestion, and the first collection, amounting to $37.00, was raised.
Jesse Lee, who felt a deep interest in Georgia, solici- ted an appointment in the State this year, and was sent nominally in charge of the Sparta Circuit, but with the evident design, as two others besides him were sent, of leaving him free to go whither he would. He left the Virginia Conference at Newbern, N. C., and came to Augusta, where he was the guest of Asaph Watterman, and in that city he preached three times on Sunday. He then went to Savannah, and organized,
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after preaching, the first Methodist society in that city .* He was here the guest of John Millen, a Presbyterian, who was a kind friend of the Methodists. He then went to St. Mary's, spending a night with the Hon. Joseph Clay, who was one of the earliest and most useful Bap- tist preachers in that portion of the State. He was visited at St. Mary's by Abram Bessent, whom he had known in North Carolina, and after visiting Jefferson- ton he preached in St. Mary's. IIere he met Angus McDonald, and went with him over into Florida, then a province of Spain, and kneeling on the soil forbidden to Protestants, he prayed earnestly that the way might be opened to the Gospel. He came to Savannah again, and in July was in the new county of Baldwin. On the 29th of July there was a great camp-meeting three miles south of Sparta. One hundred and seventy-six tents were pitched. Twenty-seven preachers were present, and above four thousand five hundred hearers.t Fourteen sermons were preached at the stand, and nine exhortations delivered. IIe then went into the new country, which was just now divided out by lottery, and to Milledgeville, where Brother Durnell gave him a home. IIe preached the funeral sermon of Mr. Drane, in the court-house, and on Monday was called to see Judge Stith, who was very ill. Judge Stith had been a deist, but in the great revival of the year before had become a Methodist. Jesse Lee found him dying, and sat by his bedside and sang " Happy soul, thy days are ended." The Judge kept his senses to the last, and Jesse Lee preached his funeral sermon in the house of Dr. Thomas Bird. This Dr. Bird was from Delaware.
* Life of Jesse Les. + Lee's Life. Dow also mentions the meeting
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He had married a Miss Williamson, from Hancock. She belonged to one of the most aristocratic and wealthy families of the State, but joined the Methodists, then so much despised. She was a beautiful Christian charac- ter, and though her husband was not in the Church with her, yet he gave her every encouragement in her Chris- tian life. One day, at a fashionable dinner at his house, a number of persons were present, and the peculiarities of the Methodists were discussed, with expressions of surprise that one like Mrs. Bird should adhere to such a sect, when one of the frivolous ladies at the table said : " Dr. Bird, just think of Mrs. Bird shouting! Why, what would you do?" The Doctor laughed merrily, and said : "Well, I reckon I should have to pour a bucket of water over her." The gentle young wife blushed deeply, and then the tears began to roll down her face. The thoughtless husband rose from his seat and went to her and kissed her tenderly, saying : "For- give me, darling ; I did not intend to hurt your feelings, and you shall shout just when you please." *
She was the mother of Mrs. Troutman, formerly Mrs. Lamar, and the grandmother of the Hon. L. Q. C. La- mar, who has followed so closely in the footsteps of his mother and grandmother. This year there was much sickness in Milledgeville, and Jesse Lee was constantly engaged in works of mercy. He left Georgia in De- cember, having spent nearly one year in his last visit to it.t
On the Sparta Circuit with Jesse Lee was a young man who was to win for himself an undying name.
This was James Russell, perhaps the most remarkable
* From her daughter, Mrs. Troutman. + Minton Thrift's Life of
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native orator Southern Methodism has produced. What Patrick Henry was on the hustings, and Pinckney at the bar, James Russell was in the pulpit. On the same day with Lovick Pierce he was received on trial into the conference. IIe had now travelled two years in North and South Carolina. He was of medium height, symmetrical in form, with a clear blue eye, a large mouth, and a well-shaped head." In his sixteenth year he was converted. He felt he ought to exhort, but the preacher even in those days thought him too ignorant. He, however, permitted him to try, and then gave him license. He thought he ought to preach, but the Quar- terly Conference, even in those days, thought him in- competent, because he could barely read ; but at last entreaty prevailed, and he was licensed and recom- inended to the Annual Conference. He could not read well. He knew Christ, and had Christ's love in his heart, and a zeal burning like fire to do good, and thus furnished he went forth to his work. With his spelling-book with him, he began his career as a preacher in the mountains of North Carolina. The children taught him to read well. IIe prayed, and studied, and preached, and souls were awakened and converted under his ministry ; and now, much im- proved and still improving, he came to Georgia. His fame was not like the slow dawning of a northern sun ; but as, with the sun in the tropics, the gray streaks of the dawn are but seen before they are lost in the glory of the day, so with him : in less than five years from the time he began to travel, the land rang with the story of his eloquence. He was rarely and
* Dr. L. Pierce.
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wonderfully gifted. His logic was the logic of the men to whom he preached-clear and convincing; his illustrations especially brilliant and impressive, his emotional powers of the highest order, his imagination glowing.
Plain men, without high culture themselves, value metal more than they do polish, and as yet the cold elo- gance which chastely arrays commonplace thought was not placed bfore the blazing fire of genius. He might have offended ears fastidions, and would have had no attraction for those whose idea of preaching is that it should be "faultily faultless, icily cold, splendidly null," but not so to those who heard him then. Camp- meetings were in their prime; thousands flocked to them, and James Russell was in his glory before a camp-meeting audience. With God's blue sky for his frescoed ceiling, with God's green carth for his carpeted floor, with rolling song from a thousand happy lips for his grand organ, he had everything to inspire him. The very presence of evil only aroused him to grander deeds. In this conflict he was no trained swordsman with a rapier, but a giant with a mace, and hundreds fell beneath his blows.
There was an addition of 600 reported at the con- ference which met in Charleston, December 28, 1807, and began its business session on the first of January.
The appointments were made, and it may be ques- tioned whether Georgia ever had, man for man, an abler body of preachers than came to her service in 1807. There was not more than a score, but there was not an inferior man among them. Randle and Capel were on the districts again. The circuits continued as they were, save that the Washington (County) Circuit was
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formed. This must not be confounded with the Wash- ington Circuit, which was in the upper part of the State, and so called from its central town. At this con- ference the first missionary was sent to the Tombigbec County, in Alabama, of which we hereafter give an account. James Russell took charge of the large and important Apalachee Circuit, while Wm. Arnold and Jos. Travis were on the Sparta. Wm. Arnold was born in Randolph County, N. C., in 1786, and died in Eaton- ton, Ga., in 1860, in his seventy-fifth year. He joined the South Carolina Conference in his twenty-second year. He travelled a short time, and then retired, and re- mained out of the travelling connection until 1823, when he returned to it to leave it no more till his death. IIe was an efficient worker for many years. Few men have been more widely known in Georgia, and perhaps no man has been better loved by those who knew him. IIe was a gifted man, gentle as a girl in his manners; fervid, affectionate, and full of spiritual power in the pulpit ; he was a poet by nature, and his sermons were richly ornamented by the choicest gems of Wesley's verse. IIe came as near to filling the beautiful picture of Goldsmith's village pastor as if the poet had drawn of him a faithful portrait. IIe was noted for his deep piety, and the sweet severity of his old age was. a joy to all. Ile was a faithful presiding elder for sixteen years, and travelled several of the most important cir- cuits in the State. IIis last sermon before his brethren at conference was in Columbus, in 1858. IIe preached with great unction, and as usual became very happy, as he spoke of the rest that awaited the weary pilgrim beyond the river. Ilis soft blue eyes, his long, silvery hair, his clear, sweet voice, and the heavenly look of the
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old saint, were a sermon in themselves. We shall see him again and often.
In May of this year the last General Convention or conference of Methodist preachers met. The next assembly was one of delegates elected. The first motion for a delegated conference was from the South Carolina Conference, and was made by James Tolleson, in 1800. The next originated with Bishop Asbury, but, through the influence of Jesse Lee and others from the central conferences, was defeated before the annual meetings; but at this general conference the plan for a delegated body was adopted. This conference was a large one, but the figures indicate the inequality of the representation : New York had nineteen delegates, Balti- more thirty-five, Philadelphia thirty-two, and South Carolina only eleven.
Dr. Coke was not present, and Bishop Asbury pre- sided.
There are evidences presented by the journal of a jealousy existing between the annual and the general conferences, like to that between the State and National governments, in which Jesse Lee took the side of the annual conference. After deciding upon a delegated general conference, a committee of two members from each conference was selected to draw such rules as they might think best for the regulation of the general con- ference; from this committee emanated the famous] chapter known as the constitution of the corporate church. The committee consisted of Ezekiel Cooper, John Wilson, Pickering, Soule, McKendree, Burke, Phoebus, and Randle. The question which has been before so many general conferences, and about which there has been such difference of opinion-as to how 6
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many Bishops there should be-was discussed. Ezekiel Cooper, a progressive from New York, moved that there should be seven. This would have been a Bishop to each conference. Stephen George Roszel moved that one be selected, and this was done by electing Wm. McKendree on the first ballot.
At this conference Ezekiel Cooper and Joshna Wells introduced a resolution which was a source of conten- tion, sharp and bitter, till 1820, when it was carried, and the strife only ended when it was repealed in 1828- It was to have the presiding elders elected. It received a respectable vote at this conference, having fifty-two votes in its favor, and only seventy-three against it .*
After electing John Wilson and Daniel Hitt as book agents to succeed Ezekiel Cooper, who declined re-elec- tion, the conference adjourned to meet in New York in 1812. We return to the Georgia work.
Abda Christian appears on the minutes appointed to the Sparta Circuit. Ile, however, exchanged with Joseph Travis, who had been appointed to the Broad River. Travis was a Virginian, and was converted in Harrisonburg. He had removed to South Carolina, had been licensed to preach, joined the conference, and had now travelled one year in South Carolina. He was a man of good education for those times, and was really a gifted preacher. IIe travelled for some years, then retired, and again re-entered the work, and we shall in coming years see him on a Georgia district, and on several stations. Ile was a ready writer, and we are indebted to his autobiography for much that has given interest to these pages.t
* General Conference Journal.
t Travis's Autobiography.
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During this year on the Sparta Circuit there was an illustration of faithfulness under all our circumstances, which is worth preserving. Travis tells the story :
" Brother Bob Martin was one of the most devoted and consistent members of the Church on the Sparta Circuit, but violated the impracticable church rule on slavery, and was expelled from the society. He con- tinned, however, to go to church, and to get happy and shout as usual. Quarterly meeting came, and by the law of the church he was excluded from the love-feast. So he crept under the meeting-house. While the ser- vice was going on, he became so happy that he began to shout as usual. The presiding elder knew his voice, and ordered the puncheon to be lifted, and Brother Martin to be admitted."
Travis reports a pleasant year on this circuit, and . mentions several among the members of the Church in Sparta then, whose descendants are members there now.
There was considerable increase in membership dur- ing the year. The larger circuits were nearly all doubled in membership. The conference was to meet this year at Bush's, in Greene County, near old Liberty Chapel, and Asbury came, on his way to it, to Angusta on the 18th December .* He complains of his flesh sinking under labor, and no wonder. Since he last visited Georgia, he had travelled over every State in the Union, over mountains and through wild forests, in rain . and snow and cold winds, and under burning suns. IIe had never been a strong man, and he was now near sixty years old. It was not less cruel, because unintentional,
* Journal.
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that all this labor was required of him. He had borne the burden alone for twenty-five years. True, Coke and Whatcoat were his nominal colleagues, but they were only such in name. Jesse Lee was the only one who had lifted a finger's weight from his shoulders; but now he was to have efficient aid, for Win. Mckendree was to be his associate. The old gray so often mentioned by Asbury is gone, and in a thirty-dollar chaise the two Bishops enter Augusta. The good news of victory greets their ears, and their hearts are happy, al- though, Asbury says, their purses were light. They passed through Warren County to Sparta, and thence to Bush's, where the conference was to be held. Wm. McKendree had never been in Georgia before. He was now fifty-one years old, and for twenty years he had been a travelling preacher. During that time he had travelled over a larger area of country than any man in the con- nection, except Bishop Asbury .* In the mountains of North Carolina, in Virginia, in the wilds of Kentucky and Tennessee, along the banks of the Yadkin, the Greenbrier, the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Miami, and the Wabash, he had gone to organize circuits and to send preachers. The adventurous settler had scarce cleared a space for his cabin, before he had found Wm. McKendree or some one he had sent to preach to him. Ilis grand labors in the West will leave their blessings there forever. After twelve years of exile in these wilds, he went to the General Conference in Baltimore. Not many that were present had ever seen him or heard him. In those days there were no religious journals, and the conference was in comparative ignorance of
* Paine's Life of Mckendree.
KLEV. WILLIAM M'RENDREE,
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IN GEORGIA AND FLORIDA, 1785-1865.
McKendree and his work. When he came to Baltimore from the far West, so plainly apparelled, they knew him only as one whose life had been one of hardship and danger. They now found him a cultivated Vir- ginia gentleman, and when he was placed on the most important committee, they found him a man of most re- markable judgment and sagacity ; and when he arose on Sunday morning to preach, and the burst of eloquence which had swept the congregations of frontiersmen fell with irresistible power upon the ears of the city congre- gation, they found him to be a preacher of might, and he was at once chosen, before the ballot was had, for Bishop. It was a choice wisely made, for he had had much to do with making the laws he must execute, and this knowledge of what the convention designed to do stood him in good service when he refused to execute the un- constitutional enactment of a delegated general con- ference twelve years after this.
McKendree was almost a matchless man. He was symmetry itself. Lee was like a great live-oak of the southern forests, which, rich in its wealth of shade and strength of body, has yet inany a crooked bough-he was always great and often odd. Asbury was most remarkable in many ways ; but he could be thrown off his balance, and be as petulant before his conferences as a feeble but fond father is before his family. Coke, learned as he was and good as he was, was a very un- safe counsellor ; but McKendree had no crooks, no oddi- ties. He was great in the field and the cabinet; ho was equal to the demand as a preacher, as a legislator, and as a presiding and executive officer; for dignity, learning, eloquence, discretion, zeal, courage, devotion and self-denial, all combined, we find no man of his time
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who was the peer of Win. McKendree. He came to the South Carolina Conference on this, his first visit, and reached the place of its session, at Bush's, December 26, 1808. The conference was in session at Mr. Bush's house, while the camp-meeting services went on at the old Liberty Camp-ground. Two missionaries were selected for the Tombigbee, and two to travel and or- ganize circuits between the Ashley and Savannah, and Cooper and Santee Rivers. The Bishops say the oppor- tunities for doing good are glorious.
At this session the recommendation of Wm. Capers was presented to the conference. He belonged to one of the Huguenot families in South Carolina, was the son of an educated and wealthy planter, and was him- self from the South Carolina College. IIe had come with his heart full of zeal, to take his place on a cir- cuit. Lewis Myers, the strict constructionist, opposed his admission, since he lacked one month of having completed his probation; but the conference yielded to the Bishop's wish, and Wm. Capers was admitted on trial into the South Carolina Conference, December, 1808, at Bush's, in Greene County, Georgia .* He thus began a ministry which, for nearly fifty years, was a benediction to the world. He was often in Georgia as a stationed preacher, and made his home in Oxford when he was secretary of the mission board. In con- nection with Stephen Olin, he was editor of the first Methodist weekly in America. He was gifted as few men have been. ITis brain was of the finest texture ; he was fervid, chaste, original in preaching. In private life, the old Huguenot blood, of which he was justly
* Wightman's Life of Capers.
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proud, and the elegant training of his early life, were shown in his perfect polish of manner. He was a front man in church councils, and the district conference, now such a power, originated with him. His piety was as saintly as that of Thomas a Kempis, and his life vastly more useful. We shall not lose sight of him while this history progresses.
Young Lovick Pierce had not let any hour pass by him unimproved in these two years of station life in Columbia and Augusta, and had advanced so rapidly that the Bishop called him from South Carolina to take charge of the Oconee Districts, which had been enlarged by the addition of two circuits, the Ocmulgee and Al- covi. This office, always an important one, was im- mensely so when the Church was in its formative state, when the presiding elder was not only to see that the points seized were held, but when he was to select the new positions which it was important to man. No one so young as Lovick Pierce had been before selected for this office in America. He was not twenty-four years old, and had been just ordained an elder. That he did his work well, we know; but what he did, alas! we cannot tell. Always disposed to say and write little about his deeds, he had deferred any full account of his early life to his old age ; and after he had written it out, it was lost during the war, and the detailed incidents of these early and important years must be forever untold.
The Ocmulgee, one of the new circuits, was on the river of that name. This was then the western line of the settlements; the Creek Nation was beyond. The Milledgeville Circuit included that section of the new territory on the western banks of the Oconee, and the Ocmulgee Circuit joining it extended its borders to
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the boundary of the white settlements on the south and west. It included parts of Jones, Twiggs, Wil- kinson, going down as far as Pulaski and Telfair. The Alcovi, including parts of Morgan, Putnam, Jasper, joined the Ocmulgee on the north Though all the people of the State were not as yet reached by the Methodist preacher, still he was in every section of the country. The work was at least ontlined. The Ohoo- pee Circuit now reappeared as a part of his district, and James Norton, a man of fine parts, was sent to this difficult field. Angus McDonald had been able to do little or nothing there. Norton was more success- ful, and reports as the result of his years' work, over 100 members. The district of the young elder in- cludes in it all the features of Georgia society. In the upper part of the district, among his old friends, he will find people as refined and cultivated as any in the State. Then, in the new counties of Jones, Wilkinson, and Twiggs, the sturdy, pushing cotton-planter, who has brought his slaves and his family to the rich new land, and then through long stretches of thinly-peopled pine woods, where there is the want of all the cultiva- tion and refinement, and oftentimes of even the civili- zation of life. Though these wilds he made his way to the sea-coast, where the elegant hospitality of the Sea Island rice-planter made some amends for the hard- ships of the way. All this immense area of country was to be travelled over, if possible, four times a year. From the Apalachee to the St. Mary's, from the Indian frontier in Clarke County to the Florida line, is the country in which the young presiding elder, scarce twenty-four years old, was to find his field of labor. Ilis duty tore him from pleasant homes and pleasant
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