The history of Methodism in Georgia and Florida , From 1785 to 1865.

Front matter

o e

THE

GEORGIA AND FLORIDA

Chapter II

Religious History op Georgia to the Introduction of Methodism— The Colonists— The Episcopal Church — The Lutherans — The Presbyterians — The Baptists 34

Methodism in America before 1785 — Beverley Allen — James Foster — Thomas Humphries — John Major — Condition of the People — Henry Parks — Richard Ivy— Francis Asbury in Georgia— First Conference — Hope Hull First Church — Thomas Haynes — Conference at Grant's — James Conner — Thomas Grant — David Merriwether — Thomas Coke — Elbert Circuit- James Jenkins — Reuben Ellis — Union of the Georgia a»id South Carolina Conferences 28

Chapter IV

Conference of 1795 — Philip Bruce — Decline in the Church, and its Cause — Samuel Cowles — First General Conference — Enoch George — Conference of 1798 — Ben jamin Blanton — Jesse Lee in Georgia — George Dougherty — Charles Tait— Ralph Banks— Alexander McCaine — Conference 1799 — Stith Mead — John Garvin — Conference 1800 — Britton Capel — Nicolas Snethen — Conference 1801 and 1802 — J. H. Mellard — Great Revival — Camp-Meetings — Conference 1803 — Lorenzo Dow— Lewis Myers — Large Increase — Conference 1804 67

Xll CONTENTS.

Chapter V. 1805-1812

Conference of 1805— Lovick and Reddick Pierce— Joseph Tarplet — Sparta and Milledgeville Circuits — Apalachee Circuit — Lovick Pierce on his First Georgia Circuit— W M. Kennedy — The Ohoopee Circuit — Asburt again in Georgia — Conference of 1806 at Sparta— Jesse Lee— First Society in Savannah — Sparta Camp-Meeting — Judge Stith — Mrs. Dr. Bird — James Russell — The Tombigbee Mission — Wm. Arnold — General Conference of 1808 — Jos. Travis — Bro. Bob Martin, or Shouting under Difficulties — Annual Conference of 1808, at Liberty Chapel — Wm. McKendree — Wm. Capers — Lovick Pierce on his First District — Josias Randle— Hilliard Judge — Wm. Redwine — Robert L. Edwards — Osborn Rogers— Epps Tucker— John Collingsworth — Conference of 1809 — John McVenn— Jno. S. Ford — Milledgeville a Station — Whitman C. Hill — Conference of 1811 — General Review , 160

Chapter VI

From 1812 to the Death of Asbixry in 1816. Henry

Bass.

James O. Andrews— Samuel K. Hodges— Location of Lovick Pierce —Sketch of his Wife— Thomas Darley— Location of Russell- Allen Turner— Elijah Bird— Continued Decline — Asbury's Death— Character of Asbury, etc., etc 106

General Conference of 1816— New Bishops— The Cabinet— R. r. Roberts — Conference at Columbia — Andrew Hammill — Death of Hull— Asbury— Morgan — R. Green— George Hill— Jno. L. Jerry— John Simmons— TnoMAS Samford— General Conference of 18'20— Isaac Smith— Jno. B. Chappell— James Dunwoody —John Howard— Wm. J. Parks— Thomas L. Wynn— Peyton L. Wade— Elijah Sinclair— Constant Decline-Cause of it ]81

CONTENTS. xiii

Chapter VIII

From 1823 to the Formation of the Georgia Conference in 1830.

Conference of 1828— Wm. Capers at Milledgeville — Monroe Mission—Geo. Hull— Yellow River Mission— Gwinnett Mission— Chattahoochee Mission— John Slade — Introduction of Methodism into Florida — Conference of 1824— Tallahassee — Tilman Snead — General Conference of 1821 — Jos. Travis — Conference of 1825— J. A. Few— Conference of 1827— Nicholas Talley— Joshua Soule— Jesse Boring— Great Revival— A. B. Longstreet — Conference of 1828 — James Dannelly — Eatonton — Josiah Flournoy — Henry Branham — Jere. Norman — Stephen Olin — Charles Hardy' — La Grange — Robert Flournoy — Conference of 1829 — Madison —James Hunter — General Review 217

Chapter IX

First Georgia Conference — John McVean — Legacy of Thomas Grant — Sunday-School Cause — George Foster Pierce — A. H. Mitchell — Caleb W. Key — Jno. B. Barton — Jno. C. Simmons — Conference 1832 — Bishop Hedding — Delegates to the General Conference — Peyton P. Smith — Myles Green — General Conference of 1832 — James O. Andrew made Bishop — Robert Emory — Death of James Bellah — Wm. Choice — Conference of 1833 — Death of Thomas Darley — Methodism in South-west Georgia — Gold Discoveries and Methodism in the Mines — Pay of the Preachers — Conference of 1834 — Joshua Knowles — First Collection for Superannuated Preachers — Cherokee District — Irwin — Hawkinsville — The Frontier Districts of the South — VV. Graham— E. W. Reynolds — George H. Round — George W. Lane — Alex. Speer — Sandersville — Jno. W. Knight — Saml. Anthony 269

Chapter X. 1836-1840

Two Conferences in 1836— January Conference in Macon— Jno. W. Glenn — Geo. A. Chappell — General Conference of 1836 — Geo. F. Pierce Presiding Elder — Columbus Conference in

Xiv CONTENTS.

December— Noble Generosity of Columbus— First Conference Minutes published— Death of John Howard — Christiak Advocate— Great Revival in Warrenton— Thomas A. Morris — The Hulston District in Upper Georgia— Conference of 1837 — G .eat Revival in La Grange— A Race-horse N\med for a Preacher— Work in Florida— Massacre op a Preacher's Family—Conference in Eatonton— Jas. R. Jackson— A. B. Longstreet— G. I. Pearce— Revival in Upson— A. Means— Wm. Crumley—Among the Tomahawks— Fort Gaines— General Conference of 1840— General Review 314

CHAPTER XL

1845-1866.

Death of Blanton and Few— Jno. M. Bonnell— J. Blakely Smith — S. C. Quillian— Chas. R. Jewell— W. B. McHan— Joy F. Steagall — R. F. Jones — J. Howard Harris — Jno. H. Mashburn — Benj. J. Johnson — Josiah Asken — Flacdew — Cotter — Cone — Reese — Howard — Marietta — Forsyth — Cedar Town- Americus — Great Revivals — Increased Liberality — Florida Work — Gardner — Cooper — Connor — Rapid Growth — The War — The Thkee General Conferences befop.e 1861 — Capers — Early — During the War — The End— General Conference of 1866 — Division of the Conference 389

Chapter XII

Methodism in the Cities — Augusta — Savannah — Athens — Macon- Columbus and Atlanta 414

CHAPTER XIII. Education —Missions — Benevolence, etc 497

THE

HISTORY OF METHODISM.

Chapter I. 1735-1737

John Wesley in Georgia— Charles Wesley— Benjamin Ingham — George Whitefibld — Cornelius Winter.

John Wesley said that the second Methodist society ever organized in the world was organized in Savannah, Georgia.

Mr. Wesley was not doctrinally a Methodist when he organized that society, but he was in a fair way to become so.

We may safely say that Methodism, as far as her peculiar doctrines are concerned, was born in Georgia, for here it was that he who was to give them form, and to defend them and to propagate them, emerged from the darkness of mystical delusion, broke the shackles of churchly tradition, and became fully convinced of those truths which, as Wesleyan, have had so mighty an influence in the world.*

In a history of Methodism in Georgia this fact must

* Wesley's Journal, and Lives of Wesley.

find place, and while Wesley's life in the State is not strictly Methodist history, yet we shall not be violating the unity of the story by glancing at it in this introductory chapter.

The province of South Carolina swept from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi, and although Charleston was near one hundred years old and country settle-1 ments had been made on the east side of the Savannah for over a century, all west of the river was an unbroken wild.

The prisons and poor-houses of England were full, and a colony not for paupers and criminals, but for those who might become so without help, was decided upon by some philanthropic Londoners. George II. granted to them as trustees all that area of land from the Savannah river to the Mississippi, and James Oglethorpe, afterwards General, was by them selected to plant the colony in it.

He came across the sea with a small body of emigrants, and on the high bluffs of the Savannah, near an Indian village, he founded the city of Savannah. He brought an Episcopal clergyman, Dr. Henry Herbert, with him, and soon a rouaj.li building — a kind of tabernacle — was erected. The Saltzburghers who came with Mr. Oglethorpe brought with them also a pastor ; and these two clergymen, one a Lutheran and the other an Episcopalian, were the first in Georgia. Mr. Quincv succeeded Dr. Herbert, but he soon became dissatisfied and resolved to go to England. When Mr. Oglethorpe decided to make a voyage to England for new emigrants, he was anxious to secure a minister for the parish.

The field was a hard one. The man who undertook the work of tilling it needed a soul crucified to the world. Mr. Oglethorpe, when he reached London, was told that there was a Fellow of Christ's College, Oxford, who would meet all his demands. He was John Wesley ; mystical — rather too much for England, too strict and careful in his own conduct, and too exacting in his demands upon others, for those times, but just the man to teach colonists going to the wilds, and Indians who had never left them, the way to Heaven. Wesley had already refused the rectorship of his father's parish, but it might be that he and his gifted young brother would consent to go to Georgia.

So Mr. Oglethorpe offered to John and Charles Wesley ministerial charges in the new colony.

John Wesley had now for six years been a Fellow of Christ's Church, Oxford ; and engrossed with his studies and striving with the ardor of an ascetic of the early days to satisfy the demands of an exacting conscience, lie had no wish to go out into the busy world.

But when Oglethorpe's appeal reached him and his brother Charles, that he might become more thoroughly dead to the world, and that he might lead the Indians to Christ, he consented to leave England and come to Georgia. Benj. Ingham, Chas. Delamotte, and Charles Wesley came with him. The brig in which they sailed left Gravesend Oct, 14th, 1735, and reached Savannah Feb. 8th, 1736. Four months of sea travel necessarily makes voyagers well acquainted with each other, and this voyage brought Mr. Wesley in contact with some persons whose services to him, and through him to the world, have been of untold value. Among the voyagers were some Moravians and Saltzburghers. Of how Mr. Wesley became interested in them, of how they taught him more fully the way to Jesus, his biography tells.

When he reached Savannah, he had about come to the conclusion that he needed to be taught the first principles of Christian faith, and by Spangenberg the Moravian, and by his Lutheran companions, he was taught what he had needed most to know — the doctrine of a free justification by faith, and of the Spirit's witness. lie accepted these truths as of God, but he did not so soon enter into the liberty which they were designed to bring to him. All the while he was in America he was a slave in fetters. The old traditions of Ecclesiasticism, the vagaries of the Mystics, and the gloomy doctrines of Taylor and Law, under whose shadow he had lived, were not so easily escaped from.

Savannah, which was his parish, was a small village, poorly built, and populated by a motley company. The most of its inhabitants were English people from the humbler classes. There were a few Portuguese Jews, and the German colony of Saltzburghers was only twenty miles above. There was a colony of Scotch Highlanders at the month of the Altamaha, and a settlement at Frederica, besides a few French at I-Iijjhgate, near Savannah. Mr. Oglethorpe had his headquarters at Frederica, for this was the point nearest the Spanish possessions in Florida, and was threatened by their forces, and Charles Wesley was his chaplain and secretary there. There were perhaps 300 white persons in the colony. Mr. Wesley began his work with great ardor. Adopting the usages of the early Church, he endeavored to bring his parishioners to adopt them also. On Sunday morning at five he read prayers, at eleven he preached and administered the communion ; in the afternoon he taught the children the catechism, and had thus a Sunday-school, one of the first, if not the first, in

America. Then he preached to the French colony at Highgate in their own tongue. During the week he visited from house to house. He reproved and rebuked with all authority. He positively refused to deviate from the old rubrics of the Church, refusing even to baptize a babe unless its parents would consent to its being immersed. He made two or three trips to Frederica, where Charles Wesley was rector, and here his boldness offended his hearers. He conversed with the Indians, and tried unsuccessfully to get access to them. He gave himself to the most diligent efforts to secure that crucifixion to the world for which he longed, refusing to talk upon any but religious topics. The result of his rigid life, and not less rigid teachings, was that the displeasure of the parishioners became greatly aroused. This received additional strength from the exercise of what he believed was a righteous discipline. He had but eighteen communicants, and one of these he repelled from the communion. She had been very dear to him, and this only intensified the auger of her friends.

Perhaps no act of church discipline of so slight importance has ever created more discussion than Mr. Wesley's course towards Mrs. Williamson, who had been Miss Sophia Hopkey. She was a sprightly and attractive English girl, the niece of Mr. Causton, who was one of the leading men in the colony ; she came over in the ship in which Mr. Wesley came, and they were for some time attached friends. The relations between them have not been fully understood, and because of this the fair name of Mr. Wesley has more than once been assailed, if not with open slander, yet with gross innuendo. He gave to Henry More the true account of ail the relations between them and of his course in the matter of discipline. From More's account we are able to give the history.

She was an attractive girl, whom Mr. Wesley thought to be a sincere inquirer after a holy life. They were four months together. He was young, gifted, handsome, and with bright worldly prospects. She was apparently amiable, and certainly very attractive. He taught her, advised her, and a genuine affection on his part sprang up towards her. Love makes a scholar blind, but it did not blind the quiet Germans to the fact that she would not do for Mr. Wesley's wife. She evidently was not averse to marrying the young rector, and expected confidently that he would engage himself; but Mr. Wesley consulted his German friends, and they advised against it, and he ceased his visits to her. This was after they reached Savannah. A Mr. Williamson gladly took the vacated place, and soon Miss Hopkey became Mrs. Williamson.

Savannah was a gossiping village. Mrs. Williamson was young and thoughtless ; aud untrue and harsh things were said about Mr. Wesley, which he believed came from her ; and believing she was unfit to partake, he passed her over at the communion. Pier uncle and husband and all her friends were of course angry. They went to the courts with it. Mr. Wesley tried to get a trial, and when he could not, much to the relief of the colony and to his own, he took shipping for England after he had spent nearly two years in Georgia. His stay had been a painful and profitable one to himself. He had not hoped to find his work a bed of roses. He found it more thorny than he had expected. He hoped to have gone into the wilds and found the untamed children of the forest, and like Francis Xavier or Las

Casas, have been their teacher and father ; but lie found himself pent up* in a little, gossiping English village, filled with godless adventurers, women not good, and men worse. lie had never had any contact with men. lie had lived in what was really a cloistered obscurity. His one idea was to save his soul; his one feeling was contempt for the world ; but they — his parishoners — " their talk was of bullocks." They had come to Savannah to get large estates, not to go to prayers at five o'clock in the morning ; and to have free license, not to observe all the ancient forgotten rubrics of the Church.

He did the best he could, and only when satisfied he eould do the colonists no good did he resolve to return, as Charles had already done, from whence he came. The startling inquiry of Spangenberg, u Have you faith in Christ ? Have you the witness in yourself ? " still rang in his ears, and the one ruling aim of his life now was to repose his soul in simple trust on Jesus, and secure the Spirit's testimony that it was done. He was a servant, not a son. The good seed sown in Georgia in his heart did not die. The old truth, to him so new, now embraced with the mind, became afterwards the food of his heart ; and while Mr. Wesley never returned to Georgia, this truth did, and in his teachings he lived again where he had spent so many stormy days. But it was a half-century after he went away before John Major and Thomas Humphries came to Georgia with this truth, to do the work he would fain have done.

As the ship that bore John Wesley to London passed Gravesend, another, American bound, with George Whitefield on board, sailed for Savannah. This remarkable man, who had been so attached to John Wesley and his brother at Oxford, and had* sooner found the light, was the first Methodist preacher who ever preached in Savannah. Methodism was a sentiment before it became an ecclesiasticism. Its central idea was ] ustification by faith, and a consciousness of it. The experimental, rather than doctrinal, was its mark ; and though George Whitefield differed with John Wesley with reference to predestination, and was not connected with his societies, yet he was truly a Methodist Episcopalian.*

His fervid eloquence, his evangelical preaching was more pleasing to the colonists than the frigid High Ohurchism of Mr. Wesley, and soon all the villagers — for Savannah had in it but 500 people — attended his ministry. After spending a year in his parish he decided to return to England for priest's orders, and to raise funds for an orphan house to be founded at Bethesda, near the city.

For nearly thirty years he was a frequent visitor at Savannah, and was always gladly welcomed, and his influence for good remains to this day. In 1769 he brought with him from England a protege, Cornelius Winter,! who wTas the first missionary to the negroes. Winter had been a wild boy belonging to the lower order of Englishmen. He was converted under Mr. Whitefield's preaching, and after laboring with him as a kind of assistant, he was induced to come to America by his patron as a teacher of the Africans, who were being now introduced in numbers as slaves, to cultivate rice and cotton on the seaboard. Winter found a friend in James Habersham, who had come a year be-

* Life of Whitefield. f Jay's Life of Cornelius Winter.

IN GEOBGIA AND FLOBLDA, 1785-1865. 23

fore as Mr. Whitefield's teacher, but who was now a merchant, and was installed as. catechist on the plantation of a retired Episcopal clergyman. He met with such poor success in his work, and found the planters so bitterly opposed to his preaching to the slaves, that after the death of Mr. Whitefield in 1770, a year after he had reached Savannah, he resolved to return to England to secure ordination. This he failed to do on account of his Methodism, and so he fell into the ranks of the Nonconformists, among whom he was a leading man till his death. Georgia in her infancy had thus the ministry of John and Charles Wesley, h>enj. Ingham, Delamotte, Whitefield, and Winter — ■men whose names are familiar to all students of church history as instruments in the now historic Methodist reformation.

Chapter II

Religious History of Georgia to the Introduction of Methodism— The Colonists— The Episcopal Church— The Lutherans— The Presbyterians — The Baptists.

The Trustees for Georgia were many of them wealthy dissenters, and for over twenty years after the settlement of the colony there was no religious establishment. Perfect religious freedom was guaranteed, save to the Catholics. Jews, Presbyterians, and Lutherans were side by side with the Church of England men. With the first body of colonists came an Episcopal clergyman, who became rector of the first parish. This was Dr. Henry Herbert, who remained in Georgia only three months ;" he died on his passage home, and was succeeded by Samuel Quincy, a native of Massachusetts, who came to Savannah in May, 1733. lie held service in a lint made of split boards. He met with much opposition and hard usage, and only left the colony after John Wesley came. Of Wesley's history while here we have already spoken. Charles Wesley and Benj. Ingham, the spiritual father of the Countess of Huntington, came over with John Wesley, and labored at Frederica ; bv 1737 they had all returned to England. Mr. Whitefield came, as we have seen, just after Mr. Wesley left ; he remained two years. Tiie church at Frederica did not prosper, nor did .the one at Savannah. In 1755 the Trustees surrendered the colony to the Crown, and the

* Bishop Stevens1 Mem. Sermon, p. !).

Church, of England became the established church. Parishes were formed ; in three of these there were churches : one in Savannah, one in Burke County, and one in Augusta. The churches outside of Savannah were served by missionaries sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. There seems to have been no prosperity in this church, and there were perhaps not fifty communicants in all the colony. Although the Parish of St. George in Burke had a church where is now Old Church, and a glebe attached, they could not provide for a rector, nor retain one. At the Revolution the field was entirely abandoned, and for near twenty years after its close we have been able to find no footprint of an Episcopal clergyman. Methodism had over 12,000 members in her fold before an Episcopal bishop ever visited Georgia.

The Saltzburghers were a band of pious Austrians, who adhered to the doctrines of Luther, and who were driven from their native hills by Catholic persecution. Frederick William of Prussia gave them a shelter in Friesland, and his relative, George II., offered them a home in Georgia. A colony of them came in the first shipload of emigrants, and found a home in what is now Effingham County, some twenty miles from Savannah. They afterwards removed their village to a healthier location, and called their new town Ebenezer. They were a pious people, industrious and frugal, and their pastors men of fine intellectual culture. They spoke, however, only the German tongue and preserved their German usages, and were not aggressive. ISTo growth was to be expected save from within and from emigration. The German emigration, however, chose the rich valleys of Pennsylvania in preference to the pine woods 2 of Georgia, and the Lutherans in Georgia had grown but little to the period we are now reaching. They had one church at Ebenezer, one in Savannah, and one at Goshen, in 1786. The first colony of Presbyterians came in in 1735, and fixed their settlement at the mouth of the Altamaha, at a place they called New Inverness, which is now Darien. This colony had Pastor McLeod as their spiritual guide. How long they remained there, or whether they ever built a church, we cannot discover. It is probable the colony was soon broken up and the colonists scattered. There are a large number of Highland names in Lower Georgia — McLeods, MacPhersons, Mclntoshes, and the like, which probably owe their origin to these emigrants.

A second body of Presbyterians were induced by George Galphin, a Scotch-Irishman and an Indian trader, to come over aud settle in Jefferson County, then St. George Parish. They were dissenters from the Scotch Church, were Scotch-Irish people, who followed Mr. Erskine. The first Presbyterian church of which we have any authentic account was in Savannah, and was established in 1760. A few years before that, however, a colony of English Congregationalists came over to this country, and after spending a short time in New England, came south to Dorchester, S. C, and thence to Liberty County, in Georgia, where they built Old Medway Church. They were people of some means, and had a ministry of genuine piety and great intelligence. Counting these with the Presbyterians, there were in all three Presbyterian congregations in the State prior to 1786. In 1773 Sir Jacies Wright made a new purchase from the Indians, and that fine country north and west of Augusta was bought. It was settled by emigrants from Virginia and North and South Carolina. Abraham Marshall, who had been a Congregationalist and then a Baptist, came near that time, and a little before him, Edmund Bottsford, another Baptist, from South Carolina, crossed the river into Burke County to preach. He founded Bottsford Baptist Church near the same epoch that Abraham Marshall founded that of Kiokee.* Silas Mercer came soon after. These three were good men and great men, and worked with great zeal, itinerating through the country. Some of them were arrested by the Episcopal magistrates and fined, but they went on in their work. In 1784 the first association was organized, which consisted of six churches, three of which were in South Carolina.

There was then in 1786 in Georgia, as far as we can get the facts, three Episcopal churches without rectors, three Lutheran churches, three Presbyterian, and three Baptist. We may safely say there were not 500 Christian people in all.

The colony now numbered 80,000 inhabitants, white and black. The social features of the country were those of all frontier settlements. In another chapter we have endeavored to represent them. The field was indeed a wide one, a hard one, and yet an inviting one. What Methodism had to do in changing this wild into a garden, we are now to see. In December, 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church of America was organized, and in the spring of' 1785, the first Methodist preacher was sent to Georgia.

* Campbell's Baptists.

Chapter III. 1786-1794

Methodism in America before 1785— Beyerlet Allen— J ames^ Foster — Thomas Humphries — John Major — Condition op the People— Henry Parks— Richard Ivr— Francis Asbury in Georgia—First Conference— Hope Hull First Church— Thomas Haynes — Conference at Grant's — James Conner — Thomas Grant— David Merriwether— Thomas Coke— Elbert Circuit- James Jenkins— Reuben Ellis— Union of the Georgia and South Carolina Conferences.

The first Methodist society in America was probably organized by Robert Strawbridge, in Maryland, before 1766.* During that year, in a sail-loft in New York, at the instance of a good woman, who had been a Methodist, Philip Embury certainly organized a society .f Robert Williams, in Virginia, was at work soon after, and then Mr. "Wesley sent Mr. Rankin and Mr. Rodda from England to take charge of the societies. More laborers were needed, and when Mr. Wesley made a call for volunteers to come to America, Francis Asbury offered himself, and in the autumn of that year sailed from Bristol to Philadelphia.

The war of the revolution began and ended. All the English preachers, at its beginning, returned to England, save Francis Asbury, whose love for the American Methodists was stronger than his love for England.

There were no sacraments, and there were no or-

* Letter in Pacific Methodist. f Stevens1 History.

dained preachers. Mr. Wesley saw something must be done for America, and acting in accordance with his views of church polity, he decided to ordain a bishop for these churches, and so ordained Dr. Thomas Coke, who was to come to America, and set apart Mr. Francis Asbnry for the superintendency of them. The preachers were summoned from their circuits, and they assembled in Baltimore, in December, 1784, and met at the Lovely Lane Meeting- House, to organize the Methodist Episcopal Church of America. Mr. Asbury and Thomas Coke were elected to the Episcopal office, and then Mr. Asbury was ordained by Dr. Coke, assisted by Otterbien and other elders.

Dr. Coke was to be a joint bishop with Asbury, but he was little more than a bishop in name, and upon Asbury reposed the great burden of overseeing and directing the efforts of the evangelists. No man could have been chosen better suited to the place.

There were now 10,000 Methodists in America, much the largest part of them in Maryland and Virginia.

Asbury realized the importance of the frontier, and at once sought to occupy it. The Western frontier was the county of Translyvania, in Virginia, now the State of Kentucky. The southern was the State of Georgia.

The first conference, after the Christmas Conference of 1784, was held in North Carolina, at the house of Green Hill, who was a local preacher. Here Beverly Allen, who had been a travelling preacher for several years, was ordained an elder, and appointed to Georgia.

The conference at which he was appointed included in it all the preachers of Virginia and North and South Carolina who could be present ; yet they were accommodated in one country house. Dr. Coke, with his fiery impetuosity, had excited great hostility to himself and the societies, as he passed through Virginia, by his vehement attack upon domestic slavery. When he reached North Carolina, finding that the laws of the State, even then, forbade emancipation, he exercised a prudence unusual with him, and preached simply the Gospel ; but the Conference, through his influence, passed the most decided resolutions against slavery, and insisted that the Church should take earnest measures to secure immediate emancipation. These resolutions accomplished nothing except to throw more serious obstacles in the way of the already embarrassed preachers.