USA > North Carolina > Historical papers of the North Carolina Conference Historical Society and the Western North Carolina Conference Historical Society > Part 17
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it this way and that, succeeding and failing, hoping and despairing- but steadily advancing in the net result has come that portion of the population which is not content with a blanket for a bed and the sky for a roof above. The Frontier has been the lasting and ineradicable influence for the good of the United States. It was there we showed our fighting edge, our unconquerable resolution, our undying faith. There for a time at least we were Americans. We had our frontier. We shall do ill indeed if we forget and abandon its strong lessons, its great hopes, its splendid human dreams." Green Hill had been resting for a lifetime under the lure of these frontiers, which represented the establishment of a great Church and a mighty Republic. It is not strange that he yielded to the lure of that other frontier which lay toward the setting sun and hid the valley in which the battle of human progress is to be fought and in which our Republic shall see the fairest fruitage of its wonderful energies.
In 1796 he crossed the Alleghanies and made a trip to that fairest picture of our continent-the section which is now called Mid- Tennessee, and into which at that time the waves of a pioneering population were washing. As he went he preached. It is both refresh- ing and inspiring to read in his diary his eventful itinerary and especi- ally to see that as he went he preached-not in the church houses for there were few of them, but in the majestic groves and the extempor- ized shanties of the settlers.
In 1799 Green Hill moved his family to Tennessee and settled about twelve miles south of Nashville. There among those beautiful rolling hills he built a residence which he called Liberty Hill. It was hardly so pretentious as his other residence, Liberty Hall, in North Carolina, but it was considered one of the best homes in that section of the Alleghanies. It was a home for the Methodist Preach- ers, from Bishop to circuit rider. Here in this peaceful home Green Hill lived as the affluent planter and the active local preacher. He had been ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury on January 21, 1792. He was ordained elder by Bishop McKendree on October 4, 1813.
It was at Liberty Hill that Bishop McKendree held his first Con- ference in 1808. This was the Western Conference which included the States of Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisana, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all territory west of the Mississippi.
Bishop Paine, in Life and Times of Mckendree, says: "The Conference at Liberty Hill was held at a camp meeting (the grounds were at the foot of the hill on whose crest stands the residence), the preachers lodging on the encampment, while the Bishops, in view of Bishop Asbury's feeble health, stayed at the residence of Col. (Maj.) Green Hill. As there was but one Conference at that time in the West, the traveling preachers collected here from Holston, Natchez, Opelousas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, covering a vast field of labor-an immense theater for missionary enterprise. To supply this extensive and extending field of itinerant occupations, some fifty-five preachers had been employed the pre-
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ceeding year. Many of these had been toiling on the frontier settle- ments, and had come hundreds of miles to Conference, fatigued with travel, enfeebled by affliction, exposure and labor; bare of clothing; in money matters almost penniless-really itinerant houseless wand- erers-but they brought cheering intelligence of religious revivals, and growing spiritual prosperity. Bishop Asbury says in his Journal: 'We have had 2,500 increase; there are seven districts, and a call for eighty preachers.'"
Only the salient facts in the life of Green Hill have been given. Let us now view him at somewhat closer range. At the beginning of the nineteenth century he is comfortably settled in Tennessee. He is far past life's meridian. We see him growing old gracefully and usefully, having behind him a constructive record which had lifted him far above the average in the roll of public characters. He had given distinguished service to his state as patriot and legislator, and had the satisfaction of seeing that state free and independent. He had thrown his whole soul into the spread of scriptural holiness according to the Methodist faith. He had not only seen Methodism established as a strong and growing Church, but had had the pleasure and honor of entertaining its first Annual Conference. He had become pioneer and had established himself in a new territory in which his pioneer- ing spirit found its accustomed exercise.
Green Hil was married twice. Both wives were wealthy and represented the best blood in the state. So he enjoyed not only acquired but inherited wealth. He was a large slave holder. He was married in early life to Nancy Thomas, on October 13, 1763. The children of this marriage were: Jordan Hill, who resided in North Carolina until his death, and left a large family of children; Hannah Hill, who was married to Thomas Stokes of Chatham County, North Carolina; Nancy Hill, who married Thomas Knibb Wynne of North Carolina, and died in 1791, leaving a large number of descend- ants, among whom were those worthy Methodist laymen, the South- gates of Durham, North Carolina; Martha Hill, who was married to Jerry Brown of North Carolina, and moved to Tennessee, and was long a resident of Lebanon; Richard Hill, who died in infancy. Nancy Thomas Hill died on January 16, 1772. On June 3. 1773, Green Hill was married to Mary Seawell, daughter of Honorable Benjamin Sea- well of old Bute County, North Carolina. The children of this marriage were Green Hill, III, who died in Alabama, leaving a large family of children; Lucy Hill, who married Rev. Joshua Cannon, moved to Tennessee and settled in Williamson County, leaving a num- ber of descendents with him; John Hill, who. after having gone to Tennessee and married, settled in Rutherford County in that State, leaving a number of descendants; Thomas Hill, who having married, also settled in Rutherford County and died at an extremely old age, leaving a number of descendants; Sally Hicks Hill, who was never married, and died in Williamson County, Tennessee; Mary Seawell Hill, who was married in Tennessee to Abram De Graffenreid, died and left only one child, who was never married; William Hill, who
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married and settled in Rutherford County, Tennessee, and died in Haywood County, leaving one son, Richard Hill, who afterward became a Methodist preacher; Joshua Hill, who moved with his father to Tennessee and afterwards married Lemiza Lanier of Beaufort County, North Carolina. He was a local preacher in the Tennessee Confer- ence. The daughter of Joshua C. Hill married Rev. William Burr of the Tennessee Conference. A descendant is Mrs. Laura Burr Fergu- son, widow of the late Gen. F. D. Ferguson, of Birmingham, Alabama. In Mrs. Ferguson's possession is the original Bible of Green Hill, and to her and her son, Mr. Hill Ferguson, I am indebted for much inter- esting data.
Green Hill and Dr. John King, the English scholar, preacher and physician, who took a prominent part in the establishment of Episcopal Methodism, married sisters-members of the Seawell family. Mrs. Louisa Hill Davis, widow of the late M. S. Davis, Presi- dent of Louisburg Female College, and whose son, Rev. E. H. Davis, is a most useful preacher of the North Carolina Conference, is a collateral descendant of Green Hill on the father's side, and a lineal descendant of John King on the mother's side. Much space could be given to the names of those who are worthy descendants of Green Hill. They are many and are found in almost every southern state. These men and women have enriched almost every walk of life. Some became preachers. One was a gifted poet, Edwin Fuller, author of "Angel in the Cloud." Quite a number became jurists and states- men. Jordan Stokes, Sr., one of the ablest lawyers of Nashville, Tennessee, is a lineal descendant of Green Hill. Senator Garland, of Arkansas, who was a member of President Cleveland's Cabinet, was a great-grand-son. Hon. Robert M. Furman, one of North Carolina's greatest editors, was a lineal descendant of our Green Hill. The list might be greatly extended and it would take in men and women who, while not so prominent as some who have been mentioned, are just as worthy representatives of the great and good man whose life is being sketched.
Green Hill has been described as a man of dignified bearing and polished manners. With his large wealth and impressive character he did not fail to exert a strong influence among his fellow men. His home was almost ideal in that early day. He never failed to be the earnest local preacher, intensely interested in the welfare and growth of the bloved Methodism in whose establishment he had taken such a practical and earnest part. He was a ready and fluent speaker and was fond of preaching the fundamentals of the Christian faith-free grace, free will, and individual responsibility. Rev. G. W. Sneed, writing of him in the Lady's Companion of August, 1849, said: "His talents as a minister of the Gospel, as I remember, were of a solid and useful character-not so much of a philosophical or metaphysical cast, but of a plain, experimental and practical kind, addressing themselves to the understanding and feeling of all classes, enforcing moral obligation and duty with power upon the conscience. He understood and highly prized our doctrines and usages, and was sufficiently versed in polemical divinity to successfully combat the
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errors of infidelity and deism, and completely to refute false doctrine."
Bishop Paine has this to say of Green Hill: "The writer knew him well and spent the first night of his itinerant life at his house in 1817, and can never forget the Godly counsel and fatherly treat- ment he received from this venerable man during the first years of his ministry. And as his early life had been distinguished by integrity, patriotism and piety, so his old age was venerable and useful. There is a moral beauty and sublimity in the gradual decline of a truly good and noble old man who, passing away full of years, ripe in wisdom and rich in grace, descends serenely and triumphantly into the grave amidst the regrets and veneration of society."
Green Hill died September 11, 1826, at his home at Liberty Hill. Far away from old Bute County among whose gently rolling hills he first saw the light, he sleeps only a few hundred yards away from the house which he built among the beautiful hills of Mid-Tennessee. Near his dust in the rock-walled enclosure is the dust of wife, sons, daughters and grand children. As I stood by his grave in the light of a golden October afternoon not long ago, forgotten were the weatherstains of a century on the headstone, forgotten was the old house swiftly passing into decay, forgotten were the first signs of decay in the hectic flush of autumn on the forest that billowed to the East. I thought only of life-the life of the Republic which Green Hill had helped to establish; the life of the great Church into which he had poured his very life-blood; the life of thousands who are feeling his influence today and of thousands who will feel it in the years which are to come; the life of that simple Christian faith which had kept true and strong in peace and in war, in youth and in old age. I seemed to see a beautiful picture of life-glorious life - shining above that old head-stone with its moss-obscured lettering, and as I reverently gazed upon it I repeated to myself a part of the inscription found on the head-stone of one commemorated in that monument-filled cathedral-the 11th Chapter of the Book of Hebrews: "And he being dead yet speaketh." His memory is a great Church's golden heritage. He needs no monument of marble or bronze. He still walks his rounds of service wherever Methodism lights her altar fires, whether it be at home or in the far-off lands into which she is throwing her picket lines. Her appreciation of such a man should find expression in a memory which preserves and perpetuates the high ideals of righteous civil government and of the kingdom of our Conquering Christ. Happy would it be if the two dwellings, one in North Carolina and the other in Tennessee, whose doors were ever open to the homeless Methodist preachers, could be kept through the years as a concrete symbol of Methodism's undying interest in the Methodist intinerant.
Methodism in Davie County
REV. WILLIAM L. SHERRILL*
E can see the hand of God in history. When Columbus put to sea with the idea of reaching the East Indies by by the western route, he little dreamed of becoming one of earth's immortals by discovering the new world. God was then preparing the way for the great religious awakening that would finally revolutionize the world. The dark ages had developed despotic government and a corrupted church under the domination of a crafty priesthood, that condemned the masses to slavery of body, mind and spirit.
The Protestant Reformers, Luther, Melanchthen, Arminius and their co-laborers, waged the battle for spiritual freedom against power- ful odds, but they were working together with God for a regenerated humanity that would in the New World, which Columbus discovered, enjoy the blessings of religious and civil liberty. This plan was to be tried out in a new country, far removed from the influences that had demoralized and discouraged men for so many centuries. The refor- mation aroused the Romanists to methods of persecution as heartless and brutal as those practiced by the enemies of Christianity in the first century. Columbus by the discovery of America made possible a new country in which the persecuted saints could worship God in their own way. The Pilgrim fathers, the English Cavalier, the French Huguenots, the Quakers, and the persecuted Palatines brought the church with them and planted the faith in the wilderness, and their numbers increased steadily. Some of the more adventurous penetrated further into the wilderness, braved the peril of wild beasts and the wilder natives, lost communication with the first settlements and by their isolation lost also not only the power but even the form of godliness. Many of these found their way into Western Carolina and were ignorant, wild and wicked, living in rude and primitive fashion.
The earliest settlers in Eastern Carolina held to the English church; in fact, until the period of the Revolution of 1776, it was the Established Church of the Province of North Carolina. While a large proportion of the people adhered to that faith, there was such a scarcity of preachers that in 1774 only six English clergymen could be found in the province, which had an estimated population of 200,000.
In Rowan county, of which Davie was then a part, Lutheranism was planted in 1745, while the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches were established in 1753. The Baptists first organized at Jersey in what is now Davidson county in 1755, and at Eaton church near Beal's church in Davie in 1772.
Thus it will be seen that the Protestants were settled in Western
* Address before the Western North Carolina Historical Society, High Point, Tuesday evening, October 18th, 1921.
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Carolina and were in some degree aggressive in planting the faith con- siderably less than 300 years after Columbus first came.
The other denominations contested with the Episcopalians for religious equality and had influential following in parts of the province long before the Wesleyan movement began to asserts its power in England, for according to the record Robert Strawbridge was the first Methodist preacher to cross the Atlantic. He settled in Mary- land in 1760. Philip Embury, Captain Webb and Barbara Heck did not appear in New York until 1765. Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmoor, the first Wesleyan missionary to America, landed in Philadel- phia in 1769 and it was not until 1771, just 150 years ago, that Francis Asbury came to throw his whole life into the work of estab- lishing Methodism on this side of the sea.
That mighty man had no material resources but wonderful spiritual power. Gideon's 300 were a vast army compared to the limited few upon whom Asbury could depend in his earlier campaigns. But they made proclamation of a truth which was a revelation to the pioneers.
These new evangelists told the people that God was no respecter of persons; that Christ on the Cross died that all might live; that the will of man was free and that his failure to choose the right forced the responsibility of his doom on himself and not on the Creator. They taught the doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit and warned the people of the danger of apostasy, because being free to choose the right, carried with it the ability, after such choice, to return to a life of sin, ending with eternal doom. They also proclaimed the doctrine of holiness, claiming and providing that if a lost sinner could exercise saving faith and be freed from sin, he could then by the continual exercise of the same quality of faith, be kept continually free from the power of sin. These were the foundation truths which differentiated the people called Methodist from the prevailing sects of that age. These truths had been long forgotten but the Methodists resurrected and preached them with such marvelous spiritual fervor that the world accepts them today without question.
Those early Methodist preachers led by Asbury were so completely on fire with the truth that every service was a Pentecost; the peo- ple were so overpowered by the mighty force of the new Gospel that they cried out for mercy and deliverance, and daily there were added to the church such as were being saved. Congregations grew and further and further did the preachers venture into the wilderness, seeking for lost souls in the cabins of the pioneers.
They were heroes of the faith, strangers to fear, veritable John the Baptists in plainness of speech and in virility of utterance. By the year 1776 they had penetrated the wilds of Virginia to the edge of North Carolina and at the conference held in May, 1776, Carolina circuit was formed and Edward Dromgoole, Francis Poythress and Isham Tatum were appointed to it. This circuit was located alto- gether in Eastern Carolina. These preachers were superior men and at the end of the year reported 930 members, and the next year John King, John Dickens, Leroy Cole and Edward Pride were sent to the same work. The West had not yet heard of Methodism. Not until
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1780 (when the Pittsylvania, Va., circuit was divided) was a circuit organized in all Western North Carolina. In that year Yadkin circuit was formed with Andrew Yeargan as preacher in charge-and there were only eleven members, two of whom were John and Mary Spain- hour Doub, the parents of Peter Doub, and the circuit embraced not less than all the territory now covered by our great conference, but the part of it which he was able to reach included the present counties of Rowan, Stanly, Montgomery, Davidson, Randolph, Davie and Iredell, besides all the territory north to the Virginia line, a mammoth circuit. We know not from whence Andrew Yeargan came nor whither he went, after this year of service. The brief minutes do not indicate that he was ever received on trial and the only place we find him mentioned outside the Appointments is under the Question: Who are Assistants? and the answer given was, Andrew Yeargan. But he was the first circuit rider to penetrate the wilds of Western Carolina, the pioneer preacher who braved the perils of the wilderness to bring the gospel to our fathers.
I imagine that when he received his appointment he started out like Abraham, hardly knowing whither he went, asking only which trail to follow in order to find the Yadkin. He had poor salary pros- pects and no missionary allowance. There was not a Methodist church in all this vast wilderness and hardly a schoolhouse. He had no official board or ladies' aid to welcome him. In the absence of church buildings he preached in the groves, which were God's first temples, under brush arbors and in the rude huts of the humble poor.
What a great debt we owe to this unknown man who in the face of such diffculty waged a heroic fight for the faith and laid the foundations upon which we are still building. He was the man on horseback, one of that great army of circuit riders who conquered the wilderness and made possible the blessings of civilization which we now enjoy.
During that first year of labor in this new field Andrew Yeargan's ministry was fruitful. He had not been long on the mission until Beal's church was built some ten miles northwest of Mocksville in what is now West Davie circuit. We learn from Grissom's history that in 1780 Yeargan built the first Methodist church erected on this circuit and therefore within the bounds of our conference. It was called Beal's church. He built several other churches the same year 1780 in that sparsely settled field. It is said that at Beal's church where the people were rude, wild and ignorant, that Yeargan in a revival meeting asked one of the hearers if he wanted to go to heaven, and the rude pioneer replied: "Man, for goodness sake go off and let me alone. I don't live about here, for I come from way in the mountains."
Among the notable men whom Davie Methodism has produced we would make special mention of Moses Brock, Peter Doub, S. Milton Frost, W. M. Robey and H. T. Hudson, all of whom possessed talent of high order and served the church faithfully and honorably.
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MOSES BROCK
Moses Brock occupied an important place in Methodist history. Born one mile of Farmington, Davie county, he joined the Virginia Con- ference in 1820 and was prominent in church councils in North Caro- lina and Virginia for forty years, was Presiding Elder of Salisbury dis- trict 1831-32, Presiding Elder of Richmond, Va., district, and later of Greensboro district in 1840.
Dr. J. J. Renn in a brief sketch of Salisbury church says: "In the absence of a church building the first quarterly conference held in Salisbury was to meet in the couurt house in November, 1832, but the Presbyterian brethren kindly tendered the use of their church and it was gratefully accepted, so that the first Methodist conference con- vened in Salisbury was held in the Presbyterian church presided over by that singular man, the stern, the inflexible, the devoted, the self- poised, the brave, the witty, the fearless Methodist preacher, Moses Brock, who was at that time presiding elder of the district."
He was one of the founders of Greensboro College, and was a peculiar and powerful preacher, noted as a revivalist and as a strong, stubborn contender for the Methodist faith at a time when contro- verted doctrines were defended with both fervor and power. He believed in living up to the Biblical injunction found in Matthew 10:11, "And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide till ye go hence." He was never a runabout, for when he went to a community it was his rule to stop always with the same family. On his first visit to Richmond, Va., as Presiding Elder, by some means no home seemed open to receive him, so he went to a hotel and always afterward when in Richmond stayed at the same public house. He was long a bachelor. Once he called to see a lady not fifty miles from this city, with a view to matri- mony and, without any preliminaries, proposed on the spot, first telling her that he had no worldly goods but his horse and saddlebags. She wanted time to consider. He said, "Think it over while I eat an apple," which he had in his pocket. Time was so limited that she had in decency to decline, but it was thought that if he had not rushed his suit he would have won her hand and heart.
Later in life he transferred to the Holston Conference. At one point in Tennessee he always stopped with a certain family. In course of time the man of the house died, but on his next round Brock asked the widow if he might continue to make his home there, and when she assured him that he would be always welcome he made his question clearer by asking her to marry him, and she did.
PETER DOUB
Peter Doub was born in Stokes, but born again at Ward's camp- ground in Davie October 6, 1817, under the preaching of Edward Can- non. Shortly thereafter he was licensed to preach and joined the Vir- ginia Conference the next year.
He was a master of Scripture and a mighty doctrinal preacher; one of the very great men whom this state has furnished to the church. He did more than any other single man to sow the seeds of Methodist truth in the hearts of the people of this section. A
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wonderfully strong tract written by him on Baptism and the Com- munion long ago fell into the hands of a Missouri youth named Enoch Marvin, who later became a great preacher and bishop in our church, and who at a conference over which he presided in Raleigh said: "I did not know who Peter Doub was, for I had never heard of him before, but the tract which he wrote on Baptism and the Communion forever settled my doubts and made me a Methodist."
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