USA > North Carolina > Historical papers of the North Carolina Conference Historical Society and the Western North Carolina Conference Historical Society > Part 14
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Evidently, in the year 1810, some pastor or presiding elder insisted that the church be given a title to the places of worship the people had erected with the result that two churches in one section of the county were legally conveyed to trustees to hold for the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.
John Pratt, February 17, 1820, gave one and a quarter acres of land on which to build a church. This lot was on Jones creek next Duncan McRay's lands. Shiloh church, a few miles out from Morven, is the direct descendants of that church of almost a hundred years ago.
About a mile east of Ansonville a Methodist church was estab- lished at an early date. Later this church was moved to the present location of Concord Church, where for long years was a widely known camp ground upon which the people assembled each year for camp meeting. 1 have been unable to learn the date of the beginning of camp meetings at Concord, neither can I find whether the new church. composed of the membership moved from east of Ansonville, was built upon the site of the present church, but the first title papers that went to record were made November 27, 1830.
At an early date the Methodist preachers began to preach in Wadesboro, presumably using the court house as a place of worship. At any rate, both Bishops Coke and Asbury preached in the court house when they passed through this section. Bishop Whatcoat, also,
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preached in the court house of Anson. Bishop Asbury in his journal leaves the following record of Sunday, January 16, 1801:
"We came to Wadesboro after a court-week. We held our meet- ing underneath the court house. within the arches: we had a most. delightful day. Bishop Whatcoat spoke with great ingenuity and authority upon 'the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.' My subject was Luke 18:27. We lodged at I. Cash's."
With this early glimpse of Wadesboro as a Methodist preaching place one would conclude that a church existed here long before the date of any extant records, which is 1832, when the Methodists. secured the lot on the Salisbury road, now owned by Mr. S. A. Benton, the present occupant of the place.
Upon the aforementioned lot stood the Methodist church till 1891 when the present church was erected at a more central point, and one of the most desirable in the entire town. After building the new church the old lot was sold and the bodies buried on the lot-five in number, among which was the body of Rev. Henry Led- better-were removed to Eastview Cemetery.
Bethel, a strong and prosperous church five miles south of Wades- boro on the Morven circuit, dates back eighty years to 1837, when the heirs of Benjamin Buchanan donated five acres of land for a church "near where the Cheraw and Charlotte road crosses the Wadesboro and Chesterfield road."
Olivet church on the Stanback ferry road had its beginning in 1843. The year following, Philadelphia, for many years a well known church about six miles out from Wadesboro, on the Charlotte road, appears on the Methodist map to continue till the new church at Polkton was established.
The Mineral Springs camp ground located just across the creek from the old White's Meeting House in Lanesboro township, had its beginning in 1845, when Neely Hubbard gave six acres of land for a camp ground. There camp meetings continued until the Civil War.
The deed to this camp ground is the first to Methodist property, so far as the records show, that contains a reversionary clause. Anson county in this respect possesses an unusual record. All those old deeds were in fee simple and the boards of trustees were self per- petuating.
A majority of the early churches in Anson have gone down and the very site of a few are unknown, but this does not imply that Metho- dism at any time was on the decline in Anson. On the contrary it has been characterized as a moving force, ever keeping abreast of the changes that took place in the county.
The Methodist church in Anson had grown in numbers and influence till the decade preceeding the Civil War was one of such prosperity and growth as to attract the attention of the whole of the South Carolina Conference, of which this had become a choice section. In out the South Carolina Conference, with the valuable assistance of men in Anson who were interested in the higher education of the young women, built on a beautiful campus'in Ansonville, Carolina Col- lege, which did a very fine work till its doors were closed by the devastating hand of the Civil War. The old building, a rather impos-
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ing structure in the midst of an immense grove of oaks near the center of Ansonville, "the lovelist village of the plain," reminds the passer-by most forcibly of a commendable interest in education sixty years ago. Wadesboro in those distant days was only a small country village; yet the South Carolina Conference thought well enough of the place to hold one of its annual sessions here in the early fifties.
The foregoing account of Methodism in Anson county from its beginning in 1785 to the outbreak of the great Civil War covers a period of seventy-five fruitful years. Pious and heroic men laid the foundations of the Methodist church in this good land and others who were worthy built thereupon. The meagre records that abide tell of success, but the finest part of the story, that is, the story of the inner lives of the saints who wrought so well, cannot be told. Because those records are in the archives of heaven.
1
Methodist Missions in North Carolina
REV. ROBERT H. WILLIS* -
HILE much is being said today about the Centenary of Methodist Missions, it must not be understood that missions in the Methodist Church originated just one hundred years ago. What we are celebrating is what we may call Organized Methodist Missions. The first Missionary Society was organized one hundred years. ago but that was not the beginning of missionary effort in the Church. From its infancy the Methodist Church has been a missionary church. The first Methodist preachers that appeared in this country were missionaries sent over from England. One of the first enterprises undertaken by the Church after its organization in 1784 was the sending of two missionaries to Nova Scotia. Dr. Coke, our first Bishop, who was responsible for the sending of these missionaries to Nova Scotia, was himself an ardent missionary, and when he died in 1814 he was on a missionary journey to India. Not only had foreign missionary work been undertaken previous to the year 1819 when the first missionary society was organized, but home missions had also come into existence. Among the appointments for the South Carolina Conference in 1813, then embracing a part of North Carolina, there appears Cape Fear Mission with Hugh McPhaill as the preacher. In an old copy of the Richmond Christian Advocate there appears a brief sketch of the first Conference held in Fayette- ville, in 1813, the one from which Hugh McPhaill was sent to the Cape Fear Mission, and it is stated that from that conference Rev. N. Talley was sent to Buncombe to change a mission into a circuit. There were doubtless other charges that were missions but not so designated in the appointments.
Even if the word mission did not appear in the Church records we could still claim that home mission work was being done in the Methodist Church, and within North Carolina, before any missionary society was organized. In the beginning there was no need for a missionary society, or a Mission Board. The Church itself was re- garded as a missionary society, an organization whose purpose it was to give the gospel to all men. The missionaries of the Church were not a few men set apart for a special kind of work. They were the rank and file of the ministry. Every preacher counted himself a missionary, and when he joined the Methodist connection it was with the understanding that he was to devote his life to the task of giving the gospel as it was understood by Methodists to all people, and that he was to go wherever he might be sent. When he was assigned to a certain field it was not to take care of churches already well established. There were not many such churches then. His mission
*Annual address of the Historical Society Mceting at Goldsboro, December 10th, 1918.
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was to evangelize a given territory, and this was what he under- took to do.
When the Methodist preachers first began their work in North Carolina the entire state was missionary territory. By this I do not mean that the people were heathen. They believed in God and in the Bible as the Word of God, but they were to a large extent devoid of real godliness. This was due in a measure to the fact that the Church had not followed them to their new homes, had not provided them with adequate religious opportunities. True, most of the Protestant denominations now established in the state were here then, and some of them had been here for a hundred years, but not- withstanding that fact there prevailed everywhere a state of irre- ligion. It was to provide for the religious needs of a people spiritually destitute that the early Methodist preachers began their work here. They came as missionaries, and the spirit which they displayed and the hardships which they endured give them the right to be classed with the Church's most heroic missionaries.
Considerable light is thrown upon the religious conditions at that time by what Bishop Asbury has told us in his Journals as he visited North Carolina from time to time. He also enables us to see something of the hardships that had to be endured by those pioneer preachers who undertook to carry the gospel to all the people. In 1775, while in the vicinity of Norfolk, he met a gentleman from North Carolina who invited him to go and form a circuit in Curri- tuck County where, he said, "they have very little preaching, but what they pay for at the rate of three pounds per sermon." He accordingly appointed a date for a visit to that section, but it would appear form his Journal that he was prevented by sickness from filling his engagement. It was five years later when Asbury first visited North Carolina. In 1780 he traveled extensively in the state. His first im- pressions were better than he had expected. He says: "I had too mean an opinion of Carolina; it is a much better country than I expected from the information given me." Yet as he continued his journey he found much lack of religion, and he had some very rough experiences. His itinerary took him through what are now the fol- lowing counties: Warren, Franklin, Wake, Durham and Chatham. I give in his own words some of his impressions and experiences: "There is a hardness over the people here: they have had the gospel preached by Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists; the two former appear to be too much in the spirit of the world; there is life amongst some of the Methodists, and they will grow because they preach growing doctrines." Again, "we set out for Crump's, over rocks, hills, creeks, and pathless woods and lowlands: and myself in the carriage. The young man with me was heartless before we had travelled a mile; but when he saw how I could bush it, and some- times force my way through a thicket, and make the young sapling bend before me, and twist and turn out of the way, or path, for there was no proper road, he took courage; with great difficulty we came in about two o'clock, after traveling eight or nine hours; the people looked almost as wild as the deer in the woods." Again, "we passed Haw River, wide, but shallow, bad going down and coming up;
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they took the carriage over by hand; then we had to travel the path- less woods and rocks again; after much trouble and fear and dejection we came to Taylor's preaching house." Of the people here he said: "The time to favor this people, I fear, is past; and they seem hardened and no preaching affects them, at least not mine; they are exceedingly ignorant withal." Another time he says: "Have only time to pray and write my Journal; always upon the wing, as the rides are so long, and bad roads; it takes me many hours, as in general I walk my horse; I crossed Rocky River ten miles from Haw River: it was rocky sure enough; it is in Chatham County, North Carolina. I can see little else but cabins in these parts, built with poles; and such a country as no man ever saw for a carriage. I narrowly escaped being overset, was much frightened, but Providence keeps me, and I trust will. I crossed Deep River in a flat boat, and the poor ferryman sinner swore because I had not a silver shilling to give him. I rode to friend Hinton's, borrowed a saddle, and rode near six miles to get three, as we were lost; when we came to the place there were about sixty people." He preached, and then said, "I was glad to get away for some were drunk and had their guns in meeting. I expect to see some of these people again, and believe they will be humbled in time, but I fear not by the gospel, which they have slighted, but by judgment." The next day he wrote in his Journal as follows: "Was engaged in private and family prayer for divine protection; for I dwell as among briars, thorns and scorpions; the people are poor, and cruel one to another; some families are ready to starve for want of bread, while others have corn and rye distilled into poisonous whiskey. These people have had some religion, but if any seeth his brother need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion, so as neither to give nor sell, how dwelleth the love of God in that man? These are poor Christians."
Within the next few years Asbury visited all parts of the state, and the religious conditions as he found them elsewhere were not unlike those indicated in the above quotations. In the Albemarle sec- tion he found the people "inattentive and wild enough." While there he made this comment: "Spirituous liquor is, and will be, a curse to this people." In Hertford, where he spoke in a tavern, "the people seemed wild and wicked enough." In Edenton he found "a gay and inattentive people." In Wilmington at the place where he stopped there were "merry, singing, drunken raftsmen," and he "felt the power of the devil there." At Swansboro he found "wicked people indeed." He has this to say about a visit he made to Hillsboro: "I rode once more to Hillsboro, where I met with a cool reception. I am now satisfied never to visit that place again until they have a society formed, constant preaching, and a desire to see me. O what a country this is. We can but just get food for our horses: I am grieved indeed for the sufferings, the sins, and the follies of the people."
In still another way do we find the early Church doing missionary work, though the word missions was not applied to it at that time. The work of Home, or Conference, Missions in our church has always been largely a matter of supplementing the salaries of the
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men sent to charges that did not provide an adequate support. The Board of Missions today is supposed to have supervision of all mis- sions established within the conference, but as a matter of fact it does not exercise very much supervision. The most that it does for any mission is to appropriate money for its support. The mission charges are not different from other charges except in the fact that they receive financial help from the Mission Board. The men sent to these charges are not a set of men set apart for a special work and called missionaries. They are not different from other preachers in the conference. They only have their salary paid in part by the Mission Board. But long before anything was being said about missions the Church was making provision for just such cases as these. This was just as much home missions as is that which we call home missions today.
In order that we may understand what was done in this par- ticular we need to give some attention to the question of salaries in the early days of the church and a brief presentation of that question will probably not be out of place here. For many years all preach- ers received the same salary, and the amount of salary was fixed by the Conference, the man on the poorest field being allowed the same salary as the man on the stronger charge. At the Conference held in Philadelphia in 1774, which was the second one held in this country, and all Methodism in America was then included in one Conference, it was agreed that every preacher received into full connection should be allowed six pounds, Pennsylvania currency, per quarter, and his traveling charges besides. In the Discipline published after the organization of the Church in 1784, it is stated that the regular annual salary of Bishops, Elders, Deacons and preachers shall be twenty- four pounds, Pennsylvania currency, and that their wives shall receive the same if they are in want of it. No one was to receive anything for support, either in money or other provisions, without the knowledge of stewards, and its being properly entered quarterly on the books. At the General Conference held in 1796 the salary of a single preacher was fixed at sixty-four dollars. Married preachers were to receive double that amount, and if they had children sixteen dollars was allowed for each child. Later the allowance was in- creased to $80.00, then to $100.00, and finally to $150.00. Not until 1866 was this rule abandoned and each charge left to fix the salary of its preacher. Throughout this period, however, the stewards were ex- pected to make an estimate as to the precher's traveling expenses and table expenses, and provide for these in addition to the regular allowance.
Now, not all preachers received the meager salary allowed. What we are concerned about here is the provision made for making up any deficiency in these salaries. At the Philadelphia Conference referred to above, when the uniform salary was first fixed, it was ordered that all preachers make a general collection at Easter in the circuits where they labor to be applied to the sinking of the debt on the "houses" (churches), and relieving the preachers in want. The money thus raised for the relief of preachers was taken up to con- ference. To this was to be added any marriage fees the preachers
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had received during the year, and any money that might be left in the hands of the stewards at the close of the year after they had provided for the allowance of their own preacher. Into this same fund every preacher on being received into full connection was to pay $2.67, and every other preacher was to pay $2.00 annually. In time a chartered fund was established, the interest from which was to be used for the same purpose. After the money thus raised was distributed there were many who still did not receive their allowance, but we can see in these efforts the beginning of what we now call the raising of home mission money.
We come now to consider the story of organized mission work in North Carolina Methodism. Previous to the year 1819, while through- out the Church missionary work was being done, there was no mis- sionary organization within the Church. In April of that year there was organized in New York the first Missionary Society in the Methodist Church. The next year, 1820, the General Conference provided for the organization of a general missionary society through which the missionary operations of the whole Church were to be conducted. Provision was also made for the organizing of auxiliary societies in each annual conference, and branch societies in each charge. The conference society, however, exercised no control over the missions established within the conference. Its work was to create an interest in missions and to raise funds for their support. All money raised was to be reported to the treasurer of the parent society, and held subject to his order. Later it was provided, how- ever, that any auxiliary or branch society might appropriate any part or the whole of its funds to any one individual mission or more under the care of the society, only the surplus remaining after the appropriations were paid being forwarded to the parent society. Under this plan, it would appear, missions in the stronger conferences were supported by the funds raised within said conferences, as is the case now. In each annual conference in which missionaries were to be employed there was to be appointed a missionary committee, and this committee, in conjunction with the President of the Con- ference, was to determine the amount necessary for the support of each missionary, for which amount the President of the Conference had authority to draw on the treasurer of the society in quarterly instalments. In our conference the Presiding Elders, as a rule, con- stituted this committee. The funds of the society were derived from membership dues and public collections. According to the constitution the payment of two dollars annually constituted a mem- bership, and the payment of twenty dollars at one time a membership for life. There were of course changes made in the constitution from time to time, but upon this general plan the missionary work of the Church was conducted for the next forty-six years, until 1866.
In organizing this Missionary Society there appears to be a departure from the original missionary conception of the Church. As we have seen, in the beginning the Church itself was a mission- ary organization, a missionary society. Its object was to give the gospel, as it was understood by Methodists, to all people, and every member of the Church was a member of that organization. But now
.
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we see a missionary society organized within the Church, and to that society is committed the task which the Church as a whole had started out to accomplish. It is true, collections were taken through- out the Church for the support of missions, and all were encouraged to contribute, but the very fact that the work was being conducted by a separate society, membership in which was optional, would make the impression that missions was a work to which the Church was favorable, but not the supreme work of the Church itself. The Minutes of the North Carolina Conference show that when occasion arose the Conference would adjourn that the Misionary Society might meet and transact some necessary business, thus emphasizing the fact that the Missionary Society was something separate and apart from the Conference itself. It may have been a forward movement in the Church when the first missionary society was organized, the centenary of which we are now celebrating, but at the same time We cannot but recognize the fact that in adopting this plan for the carrying on of our missionary work the Church opened the way for the impression to be made that it is altogether optional with the individual member of the Church whether or not he will have a part in the work.
In the raising of missionary money throughout this period there was no distinction made between Foreign and Home or Conference Missions. The collection was merely for missions, it all went into the same treasury, and from the one general fund all the missions of the Church were supported. Not until 1833 was a missionary sent to any foreign field, and at the end of this period comparatively little had been done in foreign lands, and the greater part of the money raised was spent in our own land. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the greater part of the money raised in our conference was spent on missions within the conference. Missions to the Indians and to the white settlers on the western frontiers had to be pro- vided for, and funds for this work had to be provided by the older conferences.
Since no division of the money raised was made, we have no means of determining just how much was raised for our own missions from year to year. The best we can do is to give the amount raised from time to time for missions in general. Here again we are at a disadvantage because North Carolina territory was then included in several conferences, and only the amount raised by each conference is given. The first time there is any report of the amount raised for missions in the Minutes of the Virginia Conference, which then embraced the greater part of North Carolina, was in 1834. The amount reported that year was $692.70. The next year $2,800.47 was reported, and the year following, $4,278.52. The South Carolina Conference, also embracing at that time a part of North Carolina, reported in 1834, $1,119.34; in 1835, $2,621.42; in 1836, $3,789.79. The North Carolina Conference, at its first session in 1838, reported $2,281.61 raised for missions. Only occasionally from this time on is the amount raised reported in the Minutes of the Conference. In 1840 the amount re- ported was only $425.24. In 1850 the amount mentioned as having been raised was $1,954.29. In 1855 the treasurer of the Conference Society,
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