USA > Missouri > Annals of Methodism in Missouri : containing an outline of the ministerial life of more than one thousand preachers, and sketches of more than three hundred ; also sketches of charges, churches and laymen from the beginning in 1806 to the centennial year, 1884, containing seventy-eight years of history > Part 19
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The original members were: W. T. and Elb. Gillen- waters, R. A. and M. J. Brown, E. B. Garrison and wife, M. W. Garrison and wife, D. Evans, N. King and wife, S. Sharp and wife, E. L. Tuggle, Widow, James and Lu Lyon, D. Cook, R. and A. Shelton, Jane Sharp and sister, W. D. Tuggle and wife, the Dickey family and Barnaby. The recording stewards have been: M. W. Gar- rison, R. A. and W. R. Brown. Local preachers: N. Shaler, T. W. Ament, W. D. Tuggle, M. W. Garrison, Nathan King and Geo. Hackler. All dead. Dr. Hamilton is local prophet now.
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I am in debt to R. A. Brown for the above facts, which . he sent me within a week of my first call. Bro. Brown is one of the leading men and Methodists of Western Missouri, and Harrisonville is one of the best charges. Erie and Buffalo first appear this year. Erie is a new name for Niangua. Buffalo is still at the head of the circuit.
Weston district first appears this year in charge of W. W. Redman, and E. M. Marvin was sent to organize Liberty circuit, his third appointment, all new charges. White Oak Grove mission appears also.
Brunswick district, with three new and four old appoint- ments appears. New charges : Spring Creek, Trenton and Cravensville. In the Columbia district, Rocheport first appears as a half station in connection with Columbia.
1844.
The Conference met again in St. Louis. Georgetown appears in the Lexington district. It is now Sedalia circuit. Linntown district, with Linntown, Mill Creek, Ozark and Steelville, new, and five old charges, appears. Linntown is a new name for Erie. My second appointment-seven years after this-was to Steelville. Starting from Steelville, I crossed the Merrimac to Burns', thence to Simpson's Prairie-now Cuba-Brush Creek, Jaques Prairie, Bourbaux, Clear Creek, Lane's Prairie, Gasconade River, Spanish Needle Prairie, Round Prairie (St. James), Wishons ( Rolla), Merrimac Iron Works, Norman Valley, Breckenridge's Mill, Cherry Valley, Gregory's, Steelville. There were twenty- eight appointments on the circuit: Powell, Coppage, John- son, Burns, Lenox, Gregory, Adams, Monroc. They are names yet remembered. Others were given in Smith's Creek circuit. J. W. and A. Hawkins, Ben Gregory and
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SUMMARY.
L. W. Powell were sent into the ministry by this circuit. Glasgow and Soule chapel and Memphis circuit are new charges in Columbia district, and New Londen and Hydes- burg in St. Charles.
This year, 1844, cannot be passed by any one professing to write the annals of Methodism anywhere in the United States, without some statement about the division of the church.
The following statements, the author thinks, contain the facts in the case :
I. The General Conference, which was held in May of this year in the city of New York, adopted a resolution by a vote of one hundred and ten to sixty-eight, which virtually deposed Bishop Andrew from the Episcopacy without a trial, and was, therefore, extra-judicial.
2. That said general Conference appointed a select committee of nine to consider the question- threatening the peace of the church.
3. Said committee reported a plan for the. division of the church, which was adopted by the general Conference.
4. That a convention was held in Louisville, Ky., May, 1845, by which, according to the plan of separation the annual Conferences in the South were organized into a separate church.
5. That this was a division of the church and not a
secession. Such the church South has always claimed ; the courts so decided, and finally the church, North, through her commissioners at Cape May, has admitted to be a fact.
6. The M. E. Church, South, is and always has been as essentially a part of the original Methodist church organ- ized in Baltimore in 1784, as the M. E. Church.
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7. The division was not caused by slavery ; else it had occurred fifty years before, but by the agitation of political questions in the general Conference by good men who con- scientiously believed it was the duty of the church to commit herself to a course of policy on great national questions, and thereby influence the state to adopt like measures. This doc- trine was taught by Dr. Coke, who was raised in a State Church and accepted by the majority in the North, but rejected unanimously by the South.
S. It was not the cause of the war, but, by preventing a quadrennial debate on the exciting issue that led to that result, postponed rather than hastened the same.
9. The Methodist church has accomplished more good under the jurisdiction of the two general Conferences than it could have under one.
10. Had each division kept in good faith all the details of the "plan of separation," much more good would have been secured.
II. Let that plan in the future be observed with regard to territory ; let the churches remain separate, each cultivating its own territory under the jurisdiction of its own general Conference, neither trespassing on the ground of the other.
12. Let the Foreign Missionary operations be under the management of a joint board, elected by the two general Conferences, and let both churches have the same hymn book.
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CHAPTER VII.
SECTION I.
Hitherto I have sketched every man whose name has been found on the roll of Methodist itinerant preachers in Missouri. Henceforth the living will not be sketched and only those of the dead who have served the church in Missouri for as many as ten years.
1845.
Twenty new names were added to the roll this year ; four by transfer ; three from Kentucky and one from Virginia ; two by readmission and fourteen admitted on trial, three of whom discontinued the next year and and one 1847.
Five-Berryman, Bennett, Morris, Burk and Devlin- are under the rule entitled to further notice.
NEWTON G. BERRYMAN was a native of Virginia, and belonged to one of the leading families of that noble state. He was born August 25, 1805. Parents moved to Kentucky when he was but six years old, and his father died the next year. He was converted when fourteen years old, and by his zeal led his mother and others of the family to the Savior. Ile was admitted on trial into the Kentucky Conference, in IS23, when but eighteen years old. He was a class mate of H. H. Kavanaugh. He traveled three years, for want of health, located, taught school and preached, as a local
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preacher three years. In 1829 he joined the Tennessee Con- ference, but located in 1830. In 1832 he was readmitted into the Kentucky Conference and located again in IS35. His name next appears in the Illinois Conference, in 1837, which Conference he represented in the General Conference of 1844, when he voted with the Southern delegates, and because of which he came to Missouri that fall and was appointed to the St. Louis circuit. In 1849 he located a fourth time. Was readmitted again in 1854 ; transferred to Kentucky in 1865, then back to Southwest Missouri in 1870, and died December IS, IS71.
Mr. Berryman's ministry spans forty-three years, twelve of which were in the local ranks, leaving thirty-six in the itinerant field, just half of which was spent in Missouri, and half of that (nine years) in the office of Presiding Elder, being the 33rd in the state.
He was a strong, instructive, earnest, successful, useful preacher, and hundreds of souls were converted under his ministry. His useful life came suddenly to a termination, the result of a kick from his horse, by which the skull was fractured and he died without being afterward conscious.
JOHN R. BENNETT was also a Virginian, born in 1812, and converted in early life. He commenced his ministry in the Virginia Conference in 1832, where he spent thirteen years and came to Missouri in 1845 and continued in the van of the Lord's hosts till 1856, when he located. Readmitted in I857. In 1879 he was transferred to the Western Confer- ence. In 1883 he asked for and obtained a superannuated relation, and in that relation was transferred back to the Southwest Missouri Conference, where he had spent the prime of his life. But before he could get ready to leave
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Kansas, the messenger came to him and announced that his work was done, and he crossed the last stream and went to the home prepared for him beyond the grave.
"He died in peace with God and in hope of a blessed immortality," December -, ISS3. Mr. Bennett was more than an ordinary man. Nature endowed him with a splen- did physique, and a most commanding presence. He had a good mind and a warm heart. Drew some to him and repelled others from him. In his pulpit ministration he was. ardent, earnest, zealous, and at times overwhelmingly eloquent. He was a revivalist and turned many from dark- ness to light. Only a few men in Missouri were more suc- cessful in winning souls than he, Had he been free from "serving tables" and had he consecrated his noble gifts-his great talents-exclusively to the work of the ministry, he would have been "a burning and shining light''-a star of the first magnitude. He served as Presiding Elder fifteen years, which is a longer term than any other man in the state has served, except Andrew Monroe. He served as chaplain in the Confederate army during the war.
After the war he was involved in financial embarrass- ment, which overcast the evening of his life with clouds. He preached the Gospel of the grace of God fifty-one years. Was just a half a century in the itinerancy. He put on his armor at the age of twenty, and did not stack his arms till the years of his life counted seventy-one. He "fought a good fight and kept the faith," and has gone to receive his. "crown of life."
FRANCIS ASBURY MORRIS proclaimed that "God so. loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe upon Him should not perish, but
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have everlasting life," for the exact period of thirty-seven years, continuously, unremittingly, faithfully, lovingly, zcal- ously, intelligently, efficiently and successfully finished his work in ISS2, in the same month and at the very same place he began it in 1845. 1
Of the thirty-seven years, twenty-seven were spent in St. Louis county, and of these, eighteen were given to the city. I have a good subject and am tempted to write at length, for I loved Frank Morris. Who did not?
But I forbear, that I may include in this sketch the memoir of him published in the Conference minutes, which was written by his lifetime friend, Rev. T. M. Finney, D.D.
"Francis A. Morris was the only son of Thomas A. Morris, one of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was born at Marietta, Ohio, September 3, 1817. His higher education was at the University of Ohio during four years, and afterward at the old Augusta College, under the presidency of Dr. Tomlinson, where he graduated in August, 1836, his diploma bearing the signature of Joshua Soule among the curators, and H. B. Bascom aniong the pro- fessors. He studied law in the office of Martin Marshall, of Ken- tucky, and was admitted to the bar in that state in March, 1838.
"In the spring of 1839 he removed to Texas, then the Lone Star Republic, to practise his profession, in which he rose rapidly, was appointed attorney general of the republic in IS41. He reached this distinction in his twenty-fourth year. At this eminence of worldly honors and emolument in the bloom of his youth, scholarly, of bril- liant talents and social accomplishments, he turned to God and laid all at the feet of Jesus, for a nobler life and a higher course. In a brief memorandum found among his papers after his death, he him- self narrates this abrupt transition : 'In 1842, during a brief visit to my father's home in Cincinnati. Ohio, my mother died, and soon after an only sister. Their deaths and dying testimony powerfully affected me, and I resolved to give up all my worldly plans and pre- pare for the world to come. At once I abandoned the practice of law, not because I thought it inconsistent with a Christian profession,
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but because I thought God had other work for me to do, being even then convinced of my call to the ministry of the Gospel. I immedi- ately joined the church at Cincinnati as a seeker of religion, and devoted myself to prayer and the study of the Scriptures. While seeking for light, I received a call from St. Charles College, in Mis- souri, to the chair of Latin and Greek, which I filled for two years. There I was received into full fellowship into the Church, by A. Monroe. Here he became acquainted with Mary Fielding, the daughter of the president of the college, to whom he was married in the fall of 1845, and who, with an only child, a son, survives him. He entered the Missouri Conference in IS45, and in due course was ordained deacon by Joshua Soule, and elder, by H. B. Bascom. His title of D.D. was conferred by Soule University, of Texas. At the division of the Missouri Conference this year, he fell into the St. Louis Conference. Thus his name is on its first roll-one of its oldest, as he was among its most distinguished members, and none more greatly loved. His first appointment was the St. Louis circuit, as assistant preacher, N. G. Berryman being in charge. At once he evinced remarkable pulpit ability, and remarkable adaptation to station work, and in his second year was appointed to the city of St. Louis, where he continued four years, two at the Mound (now St. Paul's) Church, and one at Asbury, whence he was sent to the old time Fourth Street Church, the mother church of St. Louis Methodism. In 1850 he was stationed at Lexington, and returned the next year, when, a change of climate being advised for the benefit of his failing health, he was transferred to the Louisville Conference, where he labored eight years, four in the city of Louisville, two years each at Sehon Chapel and Brook Street Church, and a full term of two years each at Middletown Church and Hopkinsville Station. In 1860 he returned to his old Conference and succeeded E. M. Marvin, at First Church. The war occurring at this time, and no Conference being held, he served that church five years. During the same period, Dr. Boyle was pastor at Centenary Church and as presiding elder of the district, it is well known to the writer of this, what peril threatened Southern Methodism in St. Louis, and how much indebted for its security it was to the personal character and reputation of the pastors of its two principal churches. He succeeded Dr. Boyle at
IS45. 237
Centenary for a term of two years, and in IS6S he was selected by Bishop Marvin to collect a society at the new St. John's Church, the chapel of which had just been completed. At its dedication that fall, eighty members from the other city charges united with the new orga- nization, and under his pastorate of four years, the main edifice was completed, and the society numbered over three hundred. In IS72 he was appointed to Bridgeton Station, where he remained four years and the following four years at Eden Chapel. His last appointment was to Bridgeton, which had been a class in his first circuit, and there his ministry ended. In all places he was uniformly acceptable, and his ministry greatly prized and signally successful. He repre- presented the St. Louis Conference twice-in the General Confer- ence at Nashville in IS58, and New Orleans in IS66. Also, he was secretary of the St. Louis Conference in 1851.
"The above is an enviable record. It attests the ecclesiastical distinction and large usefulness of his ministry, and at every point in it there are illustrative incidents in evidence of the greatness of the man, the grace of the Christian, and the peculiarities of a Metho- dist preacher. His natural qualities and acquired abilities were pre- eminent. He had a pleasing presence, a winning bearing, a bright and acute intellect, sensibilities delicate and pure, and a temper sin- gularly meek and humble. Under a quiet manner, there were cour- age and resoluteness; naturally retiring and yielding, but in a crisis, prompt, bold, and firm. His spirit was thoroughly unselfish, wholly without guile, pervaded by the law of kindness. We think of him prominently as the loving and loved Morris.
He was amiable, but not weak. In his character beauty and strength were strikingly blended. It is rare to have seen so bright an intellect joined with such a kindly spirit; the culture of the schools, with the simplicity of a child; the gentleness of a woman, with the strength of a man. Amidst all his just claims to pre-eminence, there was utter unpretentiousness. What he said of another was true of himself. He belonged to that rare class of men who esteem others more highly than themselves. According to every just standard of judgment, his place among the ministers of Christ is among the true and most eminent, and among preachers in the front rank. A man of genius and culture, soundly converted, thoroughly consecrated, devout, heavenly-minded, living in close and constant communion
23S
JAMES R. BURK.
with Christ; and, above all, having an unction of the Holy One, he was a sound teacher, a safe guide, and preached the gospel purely, powerfully and successfully. 1Ie was an attentive pastor, and had what has been styled the gift and grace of parlor preaching. He has accomplished a great career, a course finished with joy, and a minis- try received of the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. The grand life of this good and great man came to a period during the session of his Conference, to which he sent this last message: "I love the Conference, I love the bishop, and I love Yesus." "Trusting in Jesus," "Jesus is with me," "All is well," were among his last utterances. His confidence and joy of hope had a touching expression in his dying message to his charge at Bridge- ton. Asked for, it thrilled us as he abruptly raised high his arm, and, with the index finger pointing upward said, in the language of motion more eloquent than speech, "I am going to heaven." So it was interpreted, as he added in words: "Through Jesus;" "A sinner saved by grace;" "Jesus the way, and unto Him the glory."
JAMES R. BURK was a native Missourian. He was born in Cooper county in 1821. In IS3S he joined the Methodist church as a seeker of religion, and was soon afterwards con- verted. He immediately felt that he was Divinely called to the work of the Christian ministry, but did not enter the same until this year ( 1845). In the meantime he went to the Lone Star state, and, like Frank Morris, entered the service of that republic. His service, however, was not civil, but mili- tary. All his life long he was proud of having been a "Texas Ranger." In some respects it was a good training for his life work. He therein learned "to endure hardness as a good soldier." But most likely, by his exposure, he laid the foundation for the disease (rheumatism ) which caused him so much suffering and abridged his useful life, bringing it to a period at the early age of forty-eight. The appendix will show that he was in the field in the thickest of the fight ; where the danger was greatest, the fare hardest, and the pay
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poorest-from 1845 to 1858-when he was compelled by that inexorable and most painful affliction, rheumatism, to yield, for a time, and rest. His name drops out of the minutes for one year. The next year finds him in the van of the hosts on Greenville district. For five years more he continued in the field, though at times exceedingly lame by reason of his affliction. In 1859, having decided to go to a warmer cli- mate, and his father's family having moved to Texas, he located, and immediately moved, to that state. Here he re- entered the itinerant ranks, joining the East Texas Confer- ence in 1861, in which he continued to travel circuits and districts till 1868, when disease again compelled him to retire. He took a superannuated relation that year, and reached the goal of his earthly pilgrimage at his home in Center, Texas, August 7, 1869, and went to that country where never is heard the mournful ery: "My friend-my beloved-is dead; where sickness and sorrow, pain and death, are felt and feared no more."
Mr. Burk was of Irish extraction, and possessed the quick perception of the ludicrous and bubbling wit of that peculiar people. He was a little under medium size, but squarely and compactly built ; had a well shaped head, black hair, blue eyes, pug nose, pleasant countenance, and a clear, ringing, rich, sweet, musical voice. As a preacher, he was both logical and eloquent. His language was correct, and his style was clear and perspicuous. He was a most delight- ful preacher ; sound in doctrine, with the keen edge of his logic, he cut away the garb of falsehood in which error is wont to array itself, and showed its naked hideousness, so that all could distinguish it from "the truth as it is in Jesus." When the divine afflatus was upon him, as was often the
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JAMES R. BURK.
case, he rose to such heights of eloquence and vehement" utterances of the truth that but few could withstand his appeals, and multitudes bowed to the obligations of a holy life. For twenty-four years-fourteen in Missouri and ten in Texas-he blowed the gospel trumpet, and multiplied thousands of men and women were helped, in their struggle . after a nobler life, by its silvery ring. "Jim" Burk was my friend, and I loved him as a brother. We were brothers-in- . law, our wives being sisters. I hope, when life's work is done, to overtake him in our Father's house-"The Sun -. bright Clime"-of which he used to sing so sweetly.
Have you heard, have you heard, of that sun-bright clime; Undimmed by sorrow, unhurt by time ; Where age hath no power o'er the fadeless frame; Where the eye is fire, and the heart is flame- Have you heard of that sun-bright clime? 1 A river of water gushes there, 'Mid flowers of beauty strangely fair, And a thousand wings are hovering o'er The dazzling waves and the golden shore- That are seen in that sun-bright clime.
Millions of forms all clothed in light- In garments of beauty, clear and white; They dwell in their own immortal bowers, 'Mid fadeless hues of countless flowers- That bloom in that sun-bright clime.
Ear hath not heard, and eye hath not seen, Their swelling songs and their changeless sheen; Their ensigns are waving, and banners unfurl, O'er Jasper walls and gates of pearl- That are fixed in that sun-bright clime.
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But far, far away is that sinless clime-
Undimmed by sorrow. unhurt by time:
There, amid all things that's fair, is given
The home of the just, and its name is heaven-
The name of that sun-bright clime.
The wife of his youth and one son survive him. His mantle has fallen on his son, who is now a member of the East Texas Conference. May he wear it worthily, and prove himself "a worthy son of a noble sire."
JOSEPH DEVLIN was a preacher of the word forty-one years-eight in the local ranks and thirty-three in the itiner- ant field. The appendix will show how acceptable he was, by his being so frequently returned to the charge he had served the preceding year. I do not remember to have ever met him but once, and had no particular acquaintance with him. I am, therefore, dependent on others for a sketch of him. This much I think I can safely say : No man has left the savor of a better name in north Missouri than he. For devotion to his work and unaffected, true, deep piety he was famous. His goodness was so transparent that children everywhere loved him. This is no mean evidence of real moral worth. But the minutes speak of him in terms so much more befitting than any I can command, that I give the min- utes entire :
Joseph Devlin was born in Delaware, A. D. IS11. He removed to Michigan in 1836, where he held for four years the relation of a local ·preacher in the Methodist church. He then came to Missouri, and settled in Christian county in 1841, and served the church there as a local minister four years more. Through the earnest persuasion of Brothers Glanville and Caples, Brother Devlin joined the Missouri Conference in 1845. On their way to Conference they called to see him, and found him in the field cutting tobacco. They said to him : "We have come for you; the Lord has work for you to do; you have
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served tables long enough. Come, let us go to the house. You must wash and dress and go with us to Conference." No doubt there was an internal call at the same time by the Holy Ghost.
In like manner did Elijah visit the field and took Elisha from the plow. Our lamented brother, without any hesitation, responded to the call, went with them and joined the Conference. Having put his hands to the plow, he never looked back, and never missed a Confer- ence from IS45 to IS7S. On Friday, October 11, IS7S, at 2:30 A. M., Brother Devlin fell asleep in Jesus. His was a spotless life. The fewest number have left behind them such a clear and untarnished record. Such a record is worth ten thousand times more than all the gold and silver this world contains. His name, for superior goodness and moral excellence, is above all price. It is an imperishable mon- ument that time itself cannot destroy, and will stand when the marble monuments of earth shall have crumbled into dust. Like his divine Master, he not only preached the gospel but lived the gospel. With the utmost propriety he could say to his parishioners: "Follow me as I follow Christ." In self-denial. in cross-bearing, and in active, zealous labor for his Master, none excelled Joseph Devlin. Through heat and cold, wet or dry, storm and tempest, he went wherever duty called.
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