VOLUME 3 — BOOK V — CHAPTER IX
METHODISM IN THE WEST — 1792 — 1796

Review — Asbury again among the Mountains — His Hardships — John Cooper the first Itinerant appointed to the West — His Colleague Samuel Breese — Henry Willis — His Sufferings, Persistent Labors, and Character — Moriarty, Tunnell, and Poythress — The Frontier at this Period — Smith and Boone in the Wilderness — Extreme Hardships of the Pioneer Itinerants — Character and Condition of the Settlers — Methodism saves them from Barbarism — Barnabas McHenry enters the Field — The first Methodist Itinerant raised up in the West — His Labors — Anecdotes — His Death by Cholera — His Character — William Burke — Perils from Indians — Perils in the Wilderness with Asbury — Martyred Local Preachers — Burke's Trials and Services — John Kobler — Judge Scott — His Early Labors — He receives into the Church Dr. Tiffin — Sketch of Tiffin — His first Preaching — Scott meets him in the West — Tiffin's Usefulness — Mrs. Tiffin — Tiffin becomes the first Governor of Ohio — His Character — Scott's Success — Francis McCormick, Founder of Methodism in Ohio — Sketch of his Life — Henry Smith's Western Adventures — Major McColoch — Valentine Cook — Asbury again in the West — Review

I have recorded, With some detail, the early trans-Allegheny movements of Methodism from the labors of the local preacher, Robert Wooster, in the Redstone country, in 1781, down to the General Conference of 1792. We have witnessed the outspread of the Church in the then frontier regions now comprised in the Erie, Pittsburgh, and Western Virginia Conferences, the designation of Lambert to the Holston country, in 1753, [1] the crossing of the Alleghenies, the same year, by Poythress; the first Western Conference, held among the Holston mountains in 1788 the arrival in Kentucky of its first itinerants, Haw and Ogden, in1786; Asbury's adventurous expeditions over the mountains; the first Kentucky Conference in 1790, and the perils and labors of the early evangelists, Poythress, Cooper, Breeze, Haw, Ogden, Moriarty, Wilson Lee, Fidler, Phoebus, Chieuvrant, Matthews, Lurton, Willis, Ware, Tunnell, Maston, Bruce, McGee, Burke, Whitaker, Moore, Williamson, McHenry, Tucker, Birchett, Massie, Daniel Asbury, and others, names which should never be forgotten in the West, for these men laid the foundations not merely of a sect, but of a moral empire, in that most magnificent domain of the new world.

On the 27th of March, 1793, the apostolic bishop of Methodism, after a laborious tour over the South, through which we have followed him, set his face again toward the far off pioneers, so dear to him alike by their sufferings and their chivalric character. "We began," he says, "our journey over the great ridge of mountains. We had not gone far before we saw and felt the snow; the sharpness of the air gave me a deep cold, not unlike an influenza. We came to the head of Watauga River, where we proclaimed to the settlers, 'the promise is to you and to your children.' My soul," he adds, "felt for these neglected people. It may be, by my coming this way, Providence will so order it that I shall send them a preacher. We hasted on to Cove's Creek, invited ourselves to stay at C.'s, where we made our own tea, obtained some butter and milk, and some most excellent Irish potatoes. We were presented with a little flax for our beds, on which we spread our coats and blankets, and three of us slept before a large fire. Thursday, 28, we made an early start, and came to the Beaver Dam. Three years ago we slept here in a cabin without a cover. We made a breakfast, and then attempted the iron or stone mountain, which is steep like the roof of a house. I found it difficult and trying to my lungs to walk up it. Descending it, we had to jump down the steep stairs from two to three and four feet. At the foot of this mountain our guide left us to a man on foot; he soon declined, and we made the best of our way to Dugger's Ford on Roan's Creek. We came down the river, where there are plenty of large, round, rolling stones, and the stream was rapid. My horse began to grow dull; an intermittent fever and a deep cold disordered me much. I was under obligations to Henry Hill, my new aid, who was ready to do anything for me in his power. Perhaps Providence moved him to offer to travel with me, and his father to recommend him. Twenty years ago a rude, open loft did not affect me; now it seldom fails to injure me."

On the twenty-ninth they were in Tennessee. "We passed," he says, "Doe River at the fork, and came through the Gap; a most gloomy scene, not unlike the Shades of Death in the Allegheny Mountain. My way opens, and I think I shall go to Kentucky. Tuesday, April 2, our Conference began at Nelson's, near Jonesborough, in the new territory. We have only four or five families of Methodists here. We had sweet peace in our Conference."

On the fifth he rode to Nolachucky. "We have formed a society in this place," he says, "of thirty-one members, most of them new. There are appearances of danger on the road to Kentucky; but the Lord is with us. We have formed a company of nine men, (five of whom are preachers,) who are well armed and mounted." "As they departed," he continues, "a whisky toper [Oxford Dict. toper = sot — DVM] gave me a cheer of success as one of John Wesley's congregation. I came on through heavy rains, over bad hills and poor ridges, to Brother Vanpelt's, on Lick Creek; he is brother to Peter, my old, first friend on Staten Island. I was weary, damp, and hungry; but had a comfortable habitation, and kind, loving people, who heard, refreshed, and fed me. We had a large congregation at Vanpelt's Chapel, where I had liberty in speaking. If reports be true, there is danger in journeying through the wilderness; but I do not fear; we go armed. If God suffer Satan to drive the Indians on us, if it be his will, he will teach our hands to war, and our fingers to fight and conquer. Monday, 8, our guard appeared, fixed and armed for the wilderness. We proceeded on to the main branch of Holston, which, being swelled, we crossed in a flat; thence to R.'s, where I found the reports relative to the Indians were true: they had killed the post, and one or two more, and taken some prisoners. I had not much thought or fear about them. Tuesday, 9, we came off: there were only eight in our company, and eight in the other; two women and three children. I went to Robinson's station, where the soldiers behaved civilly. We gave them two exhortations, and had prayer with them. They honored me with the swinging hammock, (a bear skin,) which was as great a favor to me as the governor's bed; here I slept well."

On the tenth they entered Kentucky, and began to hold frequent quarterly meetings, riding often thirty or forty miles a day without food from morning till night. "I cannot," he remarks, "stand quarterly meetings every day. None need desire to be an American bishop upon our plan for the ease, honor, or interest that a tends the office. From my present views and feelings, I am led to wish the Conference would elect another bishop, who might afford me some help. Tuesday, 16th, rode thirty miles without food for man or horse. I was uncomfortable when I came into the neighborhood of W.'s. There is a falling away among the people. Lord, help me to bear up in the evil day! Let me not disquiet myself; and kill man and horse in vain.

Throughout these and all his other labors and outward distractions, we find continual evidence of his devout watchfulness over his inner life. In spite of frequent attacks of his constitutional dejection, perhaps as the sanctified effect of this chronic trial, his soul soars above surrounding harassments to an ethereal region of peace and prayer. "My winter's clothing," he writes, "the heat of the weather, and my great exertions in traveling, cause me to be heavy with sleep; yet, blessed be God! I live continually in his presence, and Christ is all in all to my soul." Such are not rare ejaculations; they breathe through all the long record of his great life.

By the last day of April he reached Lexington, where the Conference began immediately, and lasted three days, "in openly speaking our minds to each other." He adds: "We ended under the melting, praying, praising power of God. We appointed trustees for the school and made sundry regulations relative thereto: we read the Form of Discipline through, section by section, in Conference. Friday, 3d, I preached on Habakkuk iii, 2. I first pointed out the distinguishing marks of a work of God; second, the subjects; third, the instruments; fourth, the means. If ever I delivered my own soul, I think I have done it this day. Some people were moved in an extraordinary manner, shouting and jumping at a strange rate. Saturday, 4th, came to Bethel to meet the trustees [of the school there.] Sunday, 5th, we had an awful time while I opened and applied 'Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.' It was a feeling, melting time, among old and young; and I am persuaded good was certainly done this day. I feel a good deal tried in spirit, yet, blessed be God I I still have peace within; God is all to me: I want more faith to trust him with my life, and all I have and am. Tuesday, 7, we rode down to the Crab Orchard, where we found company enough, some of whom were very wild: we had a company of our own, and refused to go with them. Some of them gave us very abusive language; and one man went upon a hill above us, and fired a pistol toward us. We resolved to travel in order, and bound ourselves by honor and conscience to support and defend each other, and to see every man through the wilderness. But we could not depend upon wicked and unprincipled men, who would leave and neglect us, and even curse us to our faces. Nor were we at liberty to mix with swearers, liars, drunkards; and, for aught we know, this may not be the worst with some. We were about fourteen or fifteen in company, and had twelve guns and pistols. We rode on near the defeated camp, and rested till three o'clock under great suspicion of Indians: we pushed forward; and by riding forty-five miles on Wednesday, and about the same distance on Thursday, we came safe to Robinson's Station, about eight o'clock. Friday, 10th, we rode leisurely from the edge of the wilderness, crossed Holston, and about one o'clock came to Brother E.'s, it being about sixteen miles." The next day he was again in Tennessee at his friend Vanpelt's, with whom he rested on the Sabbath. "I have traveled," he adds, "between five and six hundred miles in the last four weeks, and have rested from riding fifteen days, at Conferences and other places. I have been much distressed with this night work — no regular meals nor sleep; and it is difficult to keep up prayer in such rude companies as we have been exposed to; I have also been severely afflicted through the whole journey." By the 18th he was at Russell's mansion, mourning, as we have seen, the death of the General, but preaching with power beneath the roof of the bereaved home.

He passed on, in one of those hardly less laborious northern journeys over which we have already traced him, and did not recross the mountains for nearly two years.

Not a few characters meriting perpetual commemoration have already appeared in the Western itinerancy. We have seen that John Cooper and Samuel Breese were the first regular preachers sent to the Redstone country, whither they went in 1784, following in the tracts [regions — DVM] of Robert Wooster. John Cooper was the humble but memorable evangelist whose sufferings we have noticed as early as 1775, when he was the colleague of Philip Gatch, (one of the two first native Methodist preachers of America,) on Kent circuit, Maryland — a man "who," Gatch says, "had suffered much persecution," for as has been recorded, his family violently opposed him for becoming a Methodist, and his father, detecting him on His knees, at prayer, threw a shovel of hot coals upon him, and expelled him from his house. He took up his cross, joined the itinerant host, and here we find him at last, the first appointed standard bearer of the Church beyond the Pennsylvania Alleghenies, the first regularly appointed one in the valley of the Mississippi, if the doubtful designation of Lambert to the Holston country, the preceding year, did not take effect, as I deem very probable. Alas, that we must say so little of such a man And yet, how much does that little mean! He was admitted to the Conference in 1775, and labored in Maryland, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, and Western Pennsylvania, and died in 1789; and the Minutes, with their then usual laconicism, gave him, evidently by the pen of Asbury, two sentences, but these were full of significance. "John Cooper, fifteen years in the work; quiet, inoffensive, and blameless; a man of affliction, subject to dejection, sorrow, and suffering; often in want, but too modest to complain till observed and relieved by his friends. He died in peace!"

Of his colleague, Samuel Breese, [2] we know still less. He joined the Conference in 1783, traveled ten years in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and located in 1798.

Henry Willis was appointed to Holston in 1784, the next year after Lambert's appointment. We have heretofore often met him. [3] He was the first preacher stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, and was probably the first who had an effective appointment in the Holston mountains. Sinking under pulmonary consumption, he nevertheless persisted in his travels through years of suffering, and was one of the most dominant spirits of the times, energizing by his irrepressible ardor the work of the Church throughout two thirds of its territory. He labored mightily for the West, as if conscious of its prospective importance in the State and the Church. In 1785 he had charge as presiding elder of a district which, comprehending much of North Carolina, reached far into the Holston country. In 1786 he was in Charleston, South Carolina; in 1787 in New York city; 1788, presiding elder of New York district; 1789, of a district which extended from Philadelphia to Redstone and Pittsburgh, bringing him again prominently into the trans-Allegheny field; in 1790 he located, but hardly abated his labors; the next three years he was again in the effective ranks in Philadelphia, with John Dickins. He was compelled to locate again. In 1796 he reappears in Baltimore with John Haggerty, Nelson Reed, and other worthies; here he seems to have remained till 1800, when he became a supernumerary, doing what service he could, mostly on the Frederick circuit, near his home, till his death in 1808, near Strawbridge's old church, on Pipe Creek. We have seen Ware's high estimate of him, and Asbury mourning at his grave as over one of the noblest men he had ever known. Quinn, who knew him in the Redstone country, describes him as about "six feet in stature," "slender," a "good English scholar," "well read," "an eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures, and a most profound and powerful reasoner. He became feeble in the prime of life, retired from the itinerant field, married, and settled on a farm near Frederick county, Maryland. The Baltimore Conference sat in his parlor in April, 1801. In this neighborhood Robert Strawbridge raised his first society. At this Conference William Watters re-entered the work — having been local for some years — and was ordained elder. Willis lingered on a few more years in pain, then fell asleep, and was gathered to his fathers."

Peter Moriarty has already been sketched as a laborer in the Southern, Northern, and Eastern States, [4] a man of great power. He also shared in the pioneer evangelization of the West, entering the Redstone country as early as 1785, with John Fidler and Wilson Lee, the latter of whom has also appeared repeatedly before us in most of the field. They were then the only itinerants on that side of the Alleghenies, except Henry Willis and the two preachers on his solitary Holston circuit. We have seen John Tunnell leading, for years, a pioneer band of preachers among the Holston mountains, [5] and buried, at last, by Asbury, among the Allegheny heights, a martyr to his work. We have also traced Poythress to the great western arena, where he became one of its most conspicuous champions, and broke down, physically and mentally, under superabundant labors, as we shall hereafter have occasion to record.

Though examples of the privations and perils of these pioneer evangelists have repeatedly been given in the course of our narrative, they can hardly be appreciated in our age. The itinerants in the Redstone country stood upon the frontier confronting the immense wilderness known as the Northwestern Territory. The scattered settlers had been slowly creeping across the mountains on the Braddock Military Road. Fort Pitt (Fort du Quesne) stood not far off; a memorial of French military adventure. A few huts nestled under its shelter; but Pittsburgh was not to be incorporated as a borough till a quarter of a century after the arrival of Wooster. The itinerants formed a circuit called Ohio, as has been remarked, but it extended along the eastern bank of the river. The great wilderness gave no certain signs yet of the magnificent states which were soon to rise on its surface: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and others, stretching to the Mississippi, and overleaping it to the Rocky Mountains. The evangelists looked across the Ohio with vague though sublime anticipations of the moral empire they were about to found in the boundless wilds. The first permanent settlement in Ohio, Marietta, was not made till 1788, seven years after Wooster began to preach in the Redstone region, and four after Cooper and Breese began their regular labors on the hither side of the Ohio River. More than twenty years were yet to pass, after Wooster's arrival, before Ohio was to become a state, thirty-five years before Indiana, and thirty-seven before Illinois. The itinerants in the more southern trans-Allegheny field, the "Holston Country," from their mountainous position, and their exposure to the Cherokees, were in even a more desolate region. "Straggling settlements" had been slowly extending, from the locality of Pittsburgh, up the Monongahela and its branches to the Greenbrier and the Neuse Rivers, where we have seen Asbury in some of his most romantic adventures. Thence they had reached to the upper valley the Holston, "where the military path of Virginia led to the country of the Cherokees." [6] Only seventeen years before the Methodist preachers penetrated to this valley, James Smith, accompanied by three fellow adventurers, passed through it into Kentucky, then without a single settlement; pushing down the Cumberland he reached the Ohio and the mouth of the Tennessee, but left no trace of his passage except the name of one of his little band, Stone, which he gave to a stream above the site of Nashville. [7] Only about ten years (1773) before the appearance of the itinerants on the Holston, and but eleven before Methodist local preachers penetrated Kentucky, Daniel Boone, the "illustrious pioneer," after previous surveys, commenced his settlement of the latter county with six families, and began a road from the settlements on the Holston to the Kentucky River, harassed by the savages, who killed four of his men, and wounded as many more. By our present period the current of emigration had strongly set in toward these western paradises, as they were esteemed, and as, in all natural attractions, they were worthy to be esteemed. But the privations and other sufferings of the first settlers were as yet only aggravated by the new accessions of population. The savages were rendered the more alarmed and relentless by the increasing probability of the inundation of their domain by the white race, and ambuscades and massacres prevailed everywhere. Asbury, as we have seen, had to travel with armed convoys, and keep anxious watch by night, and his preachers pursued their mountainous routes in continual hazard of their lives. Their fare was the hardest; the habitations of the settlers were log-cabins, clinging to the shelter of "stations," or stockaded "blockhouses." The preachers lived chiefly on Indian corn and game. They could get little or no money, except what their brethren (themselves poor) of the more eastern Conferences could send them by Asbury. They wore the coarsest clothing, often tattered or patched. Their congregations gathered at the stations with arms, with sentinels stationed around to announce the approach of savages, and were not infrequently broken up, in the midst of their worship, by the alarm of the war-whoop and the sound of muskets. The population was generally, though not universally, of the rudest character; much of it likely to sink into barbarism had it not been for the gospel so persistently borne along from settlement to settlement by these unpaid and self-sacrificing men. We have already shown, from a contemporary author, that bankrupts, refugees from justice, deserters of wives and children, and all sorts of reckless adventurers, hastened to these wildernesses. It was soon demonstratively evident that the "itinerancy" was a providential provision for the great moral exigencies of this new, this strange, this vast western world, almost barricaded by mountains from the Christian civilization of the Atlantic states, but not barricaded from the civilizing power of Christianity as embodied in the indomitable ministry of Methodism. The preachers, many of whom had come from comfortable Eastern families, some of whom were men of no little intelligence and refinement, saw the sublime importance of their frontier work in contrast with its extreme privations and humiliations, and shrank not from their mission. They became "all things to all men;" while astonishing the people with their rare eloquence, they won their sympathies, their admiration, their intimate and hearty fellowship, by proving that they could chivalrously share their perils from savages, and enjoy the rude but romantic life of their cabins and stockades. A Methodist preacher, than whom no one knew more of the early West, says of these times that "the backwoodsman usually wore a hunting-skirt and trousers made of buckskin, and moccasins of the same material. His cap was made of coonskin, and sometimes ornamented with a fox's tail. The ladies dressed in linsey-woolsey [Oxford Dict. linsey-woolsey n. a fabric of coarse wool woven on a cotton warp. Etymology ME f. linsey coarse linen, prob. f. Lindsey in Suffolk + wool, with jingling ending — DVM], and sometimes buckskin." [8] The comparatively few, of the higher classes, sported the eastern "fashions" of the times as best they could, but the people generally were extremely self-negligent. Many of the cabins, as Asbury has shown us, were filthy, and hardly habitable; drunkenness prevailed, and weapons were habitually carried, and too readily used. But Methodism quickly pervaded this imperiled population, like leaven, and it is hardly too much to say that it

It was among such scenes that the itinerants carried the cross, and soon bore it to the very front of emigration, leading with it the rude but triumphant popular march.

These first evangelists were immediately followed by some of the strongest men of the ministry. Barnabas McHenry entered the great field as early as 1789, and lives yet in its traditions as one of its most notable ecclesiastical founders. He has the peculiar honor of being the first Methodist preacher raised up west of the Mountains. [9]

He was born December 10, 1767, in Eastern Virginia, but in his tenth year his family emigrated to the west of the Virginia Mountains. In his fifteenth year, about two years before the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, he was converted under the labors of a pioneer Methodist preacher, who had penetrated to his distant home. [10] He joined the itinerancy in 1787, when not twenty years old. His superior natural powers, improved with the utmost assiduity, gave him almost immediately a commanding influence, and, after traveling two years, he was made an elder, and in two years more a presiding elder. Bishop Bascom, who knew him long and intimately, says: "He was early remarkable for an admirable acquaintance with theology, and a felicitous use of language in the pulpit. In both his excellence was beyond dispute, and so conversant was he with the whole range of theology as usually taught in the pulpit, and so accurately acquainted with the laws and structure of the English language especially, that his judgments, with those who knew him, had the force of law on these subjects. In the Greek of the New Testament he subsequently became quite a proficient, while his less perfect knowledge of Hebrew and Latin enabled him to consult authorities with great facility." His first circuit was on the Yadkin, and extended from the eastern slope of the mountains down into North Carolina; but in 1788 he was sent to the Cumberland Circuit, comprising a great range of country in Southern Kentucky and Tennessee. He became a chieftain of Western Methodism, braving its severest trials, and leading, on immense districts, bands of its ministerial pioneers. His excessive labors broke him down in 1795, and he retired to a farm near Springfield, Washington County, Ky., whence, however, he continued his ministry, as he had strength, in all the surrounding country, and sometimes to remote distances. He also established a school, in which he successfully taught, for he appreciated the importance of education to the young commonwealth rising around him. "In this way," says his episcopal biographer, "he continued steadily to wield a most enviable influence in every circle in which he was known, and it was during this period he contributed so largely to the establishment and reputation of the Church in Kentucky. His character commanded universal respect. His influence was felt wherever he was known personally or by reputation. It was generally conceded that no minister in the state, of whatever denomination, occupied higher intellectual or moral rank. Many of the most influential men in the state were his friends, associates and correspondents. From the period of his location until he again joined the traveling connection, the ministry of the Church especially, in all its grades, largely shared his hospitality, counsels, and confidence; and in his quiet retirement and unobtrusive habits of life at 'Mount Pleasant,' he continued to devote himself to the great interests of practical godliness and the common weal of all about him. Whether in the bosom of his family or a circle of friends, in the pulpit or the schoolroom, on his farm or in his study, he was the same uniform example of devotion to the best interests of humanity." His superior self-culture enabled him to wield a powerful pen for his people, and in 1812 he vindicated them against the printed attacks of two western clergymen, in a pamphlet of marked ability, containing "passages worthy of the pen of Horsely."

He resumed his itinerant labors in 1818, and continued them, in important western appointments, till 1824, when he was returned "superannuated," in which honored relation to the Conference he remained till his death, seven years later. His ministry extended through forty-six years, twenty-three of them in the itinerancy, and twenty-three in the local ranks. Like most of the itinerants of his day, he left few or no records of his frontier life, but his biographer speaks of "the cherished traditions of the beauty, unction, and eloquence of his preaching, together with the dangers and hardships to which he was exposed as a pioneer missionary in the wilderness of the West. The noble band of his associates, too, what do we know of them! How eminently worthy of preservation is this part of the history of the Church in the West, especially Kentucky and Tennessee. The exposure and suffering, the adventures and hairbreadth escapes of McHenry, Lee, Kobler, Cook, Ogden, Burke, Garrett, and others, would alone furnish a modern Tasso [Oxford Dict. Gk f. tasso = arrange — perhaps the meaning here is arranger, or writer — DVM], with matter for an epic. We have heard many startling incidents connected with 'these early times,' related by McHenry, Cook, Burke, Garrett, and others, their associates. On one occasion, remaining over night at the cabin of a friend in the wilderness, after the family had retired, McHenry spent two or three hours reading at a table by candle light, with the door of the cabin partly open. The next night the Indians murdered this whole family, and stated that they had gone to the cabin to effect the purpose the night before, but finding the door open and a light within, they supposed the inmates were prepared for an attack, and postponed the execution of their purpose until circumstances should appear more favorable. On another occasion, passing the night at the house of his future father-in-law, Col. Hardin, the Indians presented themselves in force, and carried off every horse on the plantation except McHenry's, which happened to be apart from the rest, and was not found by them. It was no uncommon thing for the men of whom we speak to be found camping out at night, amid the gloom of forest solitudes, surrounded by the Indians, and the next day at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles preaching to the frontier settlers in their cabins, forts, or blockhouses, as the case might be. The track, the trail, the yell of the Indian, his campfire and the crack of his rifle; watching by day and sleeping under guard at night, were with these men almost ordinary occurrences. Would we could do justice to the memory of men so fearless and abundant in labor, and at the same time illustrious in talent and virtue. Among all these McHenry held eminent rank, and well and nobly did he 'serve his generation by the will of God.' The great theme of his ministrations, for several years before his death, was holiness of heart and life, essential and attainable, as the proper finish of Christian character, and the only preparation for the rewards of immortality. And how beautifully did his life exemplify his faith! His death, too, how calmly peaceful, under circumstances the most appalling! On Sabbath, the 9th of June, 1833, the cholera appeared in Springfield, four miles from his residence, and with such violence that by little after noon of the next day, in a population of only a few hundreds, there had been some thirty cases, and ten or twelve deaths. He went to town early Monday morning, and spent the day with the sick and the dying. On Tuesday he repeated his visit, and again on Wednesday. On Thursday he visited some of his immediate neighbors, among whom the cholera had appeared. On Friday morning he was attacked himself. The attack, however, did not appear to be violent; once or twice he was sensibly relieved, and for several hours after the attack it was thought he could recover. He suffered very little, but toward evening was found to be sinking rapidly, and at one o'clock, Saturday morning, the 15th of June, he expired. Mrs. McHenry, who was attacked about noon of Friday, and who appeared to suffer almost beyond expression, required the attention of the only members of the family present so constantly, that he said but little during his last hours, except to give occasional directions, answer inquiries, and express a wish, in a whisper to one of his daughters, as to the place of his burial. His whole manner indicated the most perfect mental repose. No alarm or excitement of any kind, and yet the most touching manifestations of sympathy with his dying wife and anguished children; fit termination this of the life he had lived! — tranquil and full of hope! Mrs. McHenry, assuring all of confidence in God, and that she felt sustained by his grace, died a few hours after him, and husband and wife rest together in the same grave. The next day, Sabbath the 16th, a daughter and grand-daughter fell victims to the same destroyer, and a common grave received their uncoffined forms; laid there by kindred hands, to be followed by yet another victim, the youngest daughter, only three days after. What a dispensation of events in a single family in less than one short week!" But to the anguish of that terrible death-scene succeeded "the rest that remains for the people of God."

Our Western biographical and historical books abound in allusions to McHenry as a champion of the ministry. A distinguished Kentucky statesman [11] says, "I have known and admired many ministers of different denominations; but the only man I have ever known, who even reminded me of my ideal of an apostle, was Barnabas McHenry."

In his advanced life, mature in character, and generally revered, he was one of the most influential men of his Church and State. He was low in stature, "square built, with a Grecian rather than a Roman face," [12] with heavy eyebrows, a sallow complexion, and a singularly frank, generous, and noble physiognomy. His mind was remarkably well balanced. Though characteristically modest, he was always intrepidly self-possessed. "Indeed," says a high authority, "if I were to mention any trait in his character as more strongly marked than any other, it would be the perfect self-possession which he always evinced under the most vexatious and disturbing circumstances. You could not place him in any situation which would be an overmatch either for his composure or his sagacity; however difficult the case might seem, you might be sure that he would betray no trepidation or embarrassment, and that he would be ready with some suggestion that was fitted to give to the point in debate a new and better direction. He was no doubt indebted for this uncommon and very valuable facility partly to the original structure of his mind, and partly to a habit of long-continued and vigorous self-discipline." [13]

In the year 1792 Western Methodism reported three districts, two in Western Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, under Poythress and McHenry, with such men as Wm. Burke, Wilson Lee, Henry Birchett, John Kobler, John Lindsey, and Stith Mead on their circuits; and one in Western Pennsylvania, under Amos Thompson, with Thornton Fleming, Daniel Hitt, and Valentine Cook as preachers.

William Burke we have already presented on the scene, and obtained from him some of its earliest reminiscences. [14] Few men saw harder service there than he. In the very outset his circuit led him through the thickest perils of Indian warfare. [15] On his second round a Cherokee war was just breaking out. After he had crossed the French Broad and Little Rivers, and arrived at the extreme point of the settlement, he found the inhabitants in general alarm. He preached that day, and at night the whole neighborhood collected, bringing intelligence that the Indians were in the settlement. In the morning he started for his next appointment, on the south bank of Little River, having a guard of two brothers, who piloted him through the woods part of the way, but becoming alarmed for the safety of their families, left him to make his way alone. He arrived a little before noon, but found it would be impossible to collect a congregation. The people were moving in, and concentrating at a certain point, for the purpose of fortifying, and by night they were the frontier house. After dark the lights were all put out, and each one sat down with his gun on his lap. One of the company started about nine o'clock to go where the Indians had collected; but soon returned, and said they were all through the neighborhood.

Burke immediately determined to make his journey to the next preaching place, which was about ten miles. He was obliged to travel under cover of the night, and had only a small path, and the river to cross, and an island to reach in the river. The night was dark, the timber very thick on the island, and he could not prevail on any of the people to leave the house or give him any assistance. "However," he says, "I put my trust in God, and set off." After having passed over a part of his route, he had to alight from his horse, and keep the path on foot. He succeeded, reached the shore at the proper point, and proceeded without difficulty. About two o'clock he arrived at the house where his appointment was for that day, knocked at the door, and sought admittance, but found no inmates. He knew there were cabins on the opposite side of a marsh, and he commenced hallooing as loud as he could. Soon some men came out, who wished to know who he was, and what he wanted. They suspected that the Indians wished to decoy them, and were preparing to give him "a warm reception of powder and lead," when the lady at whose house the itinerants usually preached came out and recognized his voice. They then came over and conducted him to the place where the whole neighborhood was collected, surprised to find that the terrible dangers of the region could not deter the evangelists from their labors. The next day he was away again, and, recrossing the French Broad River, was beyond the reach of immediate danger. He passed up through the circuit, leaving the frontier appointments, which were Pine Chapel, and Little and Big Pigeon, on the south side of the river; and the first intelligence he had from that quarter was that all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of the Pine Chapel were massacred in one night.

The next year he labored chiefly on Clinch Circuit, "a frontier one," he says, "of three weeks, where I was alone, without even a local preacher to help me;" but he had a "good revival," though many conflicts, in a new country, with Indian "warfare going on all the winter on the southern borders." He started in this year, for the Annual Conference, still further westward, in Kentucky, and gives us some idea of Asbury's episcopal journeys in the wilderness. McHenry and other preachers accompanied him, making, with some lay adventurers and "friends," who were to convoy them, a company of sixteen. "We were all armed," he says, "except the bishop. It was about one hundred and thirty miles through the wilderness, with but one house in Powell's Valley, where we stayed the first night. Next morning, by sunrise, we crossed Cumberland Mountain, and entered into the heart of the wilderness. I will here introduce a plan that Asbury suggested before we left the settlements. It was to make a rope long enough to tie to the trees all around the camp, when we stopped at night, except a small passage for us to retreat, should the Indians surprise us; the rope to be so fixed as to strike the Indians below the knee, in which case they would fall forward, and we would retreat into the dark and pour in a fire upon them from our rifles. We accordingly prepared ourselves with the rope, and placed it on our packhorse. We had to pack on the horses we rode corn sufficient to feed them for three days, and our own provisions, besides our saddlebags of clothes. Through the course of the day nothing material transpired till very late in the afternoon, when, passing up a stony hollow from Richland Creek, at the head of which was the warpath from the northern Indians to the southern tribes, we heard, just over the point of a hill, a noise like a child crying in great distress. We soon discovered that Indians were there, and the reason why they used that stratagem to decoy us was, that, a few days before, they had defeated a company, known for a long time as McFarland's defeat, and a number were killed, and several children were supposed to be lost in the woods. We immediately put whip to our horses, and in a few minutes crossed the ridge and descended to Camp Creek about sunset, when we called a halt to consult on what was best to be done, and, on putting it to a vote whether we should proceed on our journey, all were for proceeding but one of the preachers, who said it would kill his horse to travel that night. The bishop all the time was sitting on his horse in silence, and on the vote being taken, he reined up his steed, and said, 'Kill man, kill horse; kill horse first;' and in a few minutes we made our arrangements for the night. The night being dark, and having but a narrow path, we appointed two to proceed in front to lead the way and keep the path, and two as a rear guard, to keep some distance behind, and bring intelligence every half hour, that we might know whether the Indians were in pursuit of us, for we could not go faster than a walk. It was reported that they were following us till near twelve o'clock. We were then on the Big Laurel River. We agreed to proceed, alighted from our horses, and continued on foot till daybreak, when we arrived at the Hazel Patch, where we stopped and fed our horses, and took some refreshment. We were mounted and on our journey by the rising of the sun. By this time we were all very much fatigued, and had yet at least between forty and fifty miles before us for that day. That night about dark we arrived at our good friend Willis Green's, near Standford, Lincoln Court-house, having been on horseback nearly forty hours, during which we traveled about one hundred and ten miles. I perfectly recollect that at supper I handed my cup for a second cup of tea, and before it reached me I was fast asleep, and had to be waked up to receive it."

We thus get some glimpses of the hard realities of the early itinerancy in the West. With their bishop bravely confronting such exposures and fatigues, the subordinate evangelists could not but be emboldened to defy them. Burke's next appointment was on Danville circuit, which comprised Mercer, Lincoln, Garrow, and Madison counties. Its settlements were mostly around the fortified "stations." It had but three log chapels in all this vast range of country; a fourth was built before the close of the year, and properly named after the heroic circuit preacher. Burke was a courageous man, and as such was chosen to command bands of preachers and laymen who used to advance to meet Asbury and conduct him westward; he led such a band, consisting of sixty persons, in 1794, through terrible difficulties and dangers among the Cumberland Mountains, to meet the bishop on the Holston, when four of the corps, who had advanced one mile, were killed and scalped.

In 1794 we find him on Salt River circuit, famous for its hardships. It was nearly five hundred miles in extent, comprising five counties, to be traveled every four weeks, with continual preaching. The sorely tried itinerant writes: "I was reduced to the last pinch. My clothes were nearly all gone. I had patch upon patch, and patch by patch, and I received only money sufficient to buy a waistcoat, and not enough of that to pay for the making."

By the spring of 1795 this brave man had traveled all the circuits of Kentucky, save a small one, called Limestone, which lay on the north side of Licking River. From the time that the first Methodist missionaries entered the new field up to this spring, there had been one continued Indian war, while the whole frontier, east, west, north, and south, had been exposed to the inroads and depredations of the merciless savages. In this spring was the noted Nickajack expedition, which terminated the Cherokee carnage; Wayne's treaty at Greenville, Ohio, put an end to the Indian wars, and the whole Western country, for once, had peace. Burke remarks that "there is one thing worthy of notice; that notwithstanding the constant exposure of the traveling preachers, but two of them fell by the hands of the savages, and both of them had the name of Tucker." He is mistaken, however; no itinerant preacher fell by the savages during these time. There was but one of the name of Tucker in the regular ministry before the year 1800, and he located in 1798. These two victims were indeed Methodist preachers and martyrs, but they belonged to the local ministry. One of them was the devoted man whose melancholy death we have heretofore noticed. [16] The other perished near a "station" south of Green River, not far from the present Greensburg.

It would not be tedious, but unnecessary, to cite further illustrations of these trying but romantic times, from the record of Burke. We read continually of incredible travels, labors, and sufferings, of journeys of upward of a hundred miles without a single house on the way, and of night campings in the woods, but also of the triumphs of the gospel against the threatening barbarism of the wilderness. At the end of our present period (1796) he recrossed the mountains, being appointed to Guildford Circuit, North Carolina. But the next year he was back again. His fate was now fixed for the West; by the end of the century he had command of most of its Methodist interests; and in the summer of 1800 he "rode down two good horses," had "worn out his clothes," was "ragged and tattered," and had "not a cent in his pocket." He labored twenty-six years in the hardest fields of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. As late as 1811 he organized and took charge of the first Methodist station in Cincinnati, the first indeed in Ohio; there his health failed, and he had to retire from the effective work of the ministry. He was universally venerated in the city; "there was no civil office, in the gift of the people, which was not within his reach." [17] He was appointed a judge of the county, and afterward postmaster of the city, and held the latter office under successive administrations for twenty-eight years. A shadow passed over his path; he was suspended by a Conference for alleged contumacy [intractability — DVM], but one of the best authorities and noblest men of the Church has vindicated his memory, and says: "Previously to this time he had been a great and good Methodist. He had done and suffered as much for the cause as any man in the great West. His controversy with the elder, for which he was accused, was about a very small matter, involving nothing like immorality, and by bad management, on the part of the Conference, more than on Burke's part, it terminated in his expulsion from the Church. I had a perfect knowledge of this entire case from first to last, and rejoice to leave it as my dying testimony that the Conference was more to blame than William Burke. It is true he was restored again to membership after he had lived out of the Church twenty long, gloomy years; but he never was the same man afterward. I pretend not to say Burke was a faultless man: he had faults and many faults; but in his heart he was a man of God. I have loved him long, and love him now that he has passed away to his home in heaven." [18] Thus again we learn, that with all their devotion and heroism these Methodist preachers were but men. It is indeed mournful that this veteran hero should, in his broken age suffer the severest and longest of all his trials in the western field, for which he had suffered and achieved more perhaps than any other man of his day, and suffer now from the hands of his own brethren, most of whom were but the children of his early people, for it was as late as 1818 that the hasty act of the Conference cast the grayheaded man out of the ranks that he had so often led to victory. His vindication, however, by one of the saintliest men of the ministry, scarcely less a veteran than himself; suffices for his memory. But further than this, the General Conference, which sustained the course of his Conference, voted, in 1836, for the restoration of his name to the Minutes. After the division of the Church in 1844 it appears in the Minutes of his old field, the Kentucky Conference. He committed errors, and showed undue resentment of his treatment; but such a man has peculiar claims on the forbearance of his junior brethren. He died in the peace of the gospel, at Cincinnati, in 1855, aged 85. [19] He had been the first secretary of an American Methodist Conference, and was a member of the committee of fourteen who, in the General Conference of 1808, drafted the constitutional law, or "Restrictive Rules" of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

John Kobler appeared in 1792 among the rugged mountains of the Greenbrier, under the presiding eldership of Poythress, whose district comprehended much of Western Virginia, and Kentucky as far as Lexington. Kobler was born in Culpepper County, Virginia, in 1768, of religious parents, who educated him in habits of strict morality. He joined the Church in his nineteenth year, and in his twenty-first "gave up home, friends, and prospects, and entered the rough field of itinerant life." [20] He appears in the Minutes of 1790 as "continued on trial," and therefore must have traveled the preceding year, though the Minutes do not tell where. His first recorded appointment was on Amelia circuit, Virginia, under O'Kelly's presiding eldership. In 1791 he began to tend westward, traveling Bradford circuit, Virginia, at the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge; the next year he scaled the Alleghenies and traveled the Greenbrier Valley. In 1793 he became presiding elder of the entire denomination in the Holston Mountains, with three circuits and five preachers; and now, in an adequate field, he displayed his full powers as one of the giant men of the itinerancy, by vast travels, continual and powerful preaching, and the endurance of the worst trials of the ministry. The next year he retained command of his mountain corps, enlarged to seven men, with five circuits. We find him there still in 1795, with seven circuits and eleven men, among whom were such befitting associates as Benjamin Lakin, Tobias Gibson, and William McKendree. His great district reached to this side the mountains. He retained the laborious office till 1797, when he passed further westward, and presided over the whole field in Kentucky and Tennessee. He continued to traverse these wilds till 1798, when we shall meet him again, in Ohio, the first Methodist itinerant who entered the great Northwestern Territory — "a man," say his brethren, in their Minutes, "of saint-like spirit, dignified and ministerial bearing, untiring labors in preaching, praying, and visiting the sick;" of "preaching abilities above mediocrity;" tall, slender, with an energy of soul which far surpassed that of his body.

Among the really great men that begin now to rise like a host in Western Methodism is Thomas Scott, known and venerated throughout the West as Judge Scott. He was born at Skypton, near the junction of the north and south branches of the Potomac, Allegheny County, Md., in 1772. In his fourteenth year he became a Methodist, and, when but sixteen and a half years old, was received on trial by the Conference of 1789, and appointed, as colleague of Valentine Cook, on Gloucester Circuit, Va. The next year he traveled Berkeley Circuit, Va.; in 1791 he was with Daniel Hitt, on Stafford Circuit, Va.; the following year he was with Thomas Lyell, on Frederick Circuit, Va., and in 1793 was sent to the Ohio Circuit, a field of "great extent, much of which lay along the frontier settlements on the Ohio River, in Western Virginia and Pennsylvania, and exposed to the attacks of the Indians." His lot was now cast, permanently, in the West. In 1794, at the command of Asbury, he descended the Ohio River from Wheeling, on a flat-boat, to join the band of Kentucky itinerants, and met them in conference at the Bethel Academy, in Jessamine County. He afterward labored on Danville and Lexington Circuits. Marrying in 1796, it became necessary, as usual with his fellow-laborers, to locate. To locate, however, was then, as we have often remarked, not to cease to preach. Scott was to remain an influential preacher when nearly all that generation of Methodist itinerants and people had passed away. Preaching on Sundays, he applied himself to business on week days to support his family. Meanwhile, he studied law as best he could with the few facilities for such studies in the West. His wife read his law books for him while he plied his work, and, by the superior force of his mind, he made extraordinary progress. In 1798 he was able to remove to Lexington, and pursue more effectually his legal studies in the office of an able jurist. He afterward moved into Fleming County, where he was appointed "Prosecuting Attorney."

In 1801 he went to Chilicothe, Ohio, where by providential circumstances he became fixed for the remainder of his long and useful life. Years earlier, while traveling Berkeley Circuit, Va., he was invited to visit Charlestown, about four miles out of his usual route, a place where a few Methodists had been for some time molested by mobs. After preaching there, in a grove, he requested all who wished to join the Church to meet him at his lodging at a given hour. He writes that "before the hour had arrived Dr. Edward Tiffin came into the room where I was sitting and commenced a conversation with me. Being a stranger to me, and not knowing but that he had been one of those who had favored the mobs, I conversed with him cautiously. He, however, remained, and several others soon collected. After singing, prayer, and an exhortation, I gave an invitation to those who wished to become members to come forward and announce their names. The doctor was standing on the opposite side of the room fronting me. I had not perceived that he was affected; but the moment I gave the invitation he quickly stepped forward, evidently under deep and pungent conviction, roaring almost with anguish, and asked for admission into the Church. He was admitted; and before I had completed that round on the circuit he had preached several sermons. Immediately after I had received Dr. Tiffin into the Church he became convinced of his call to the ministry. Conferring not with flesh and blood, and without waiting for a license, he forthwith commenced preaching. One of the places selected by him for that purpose was Bullskin. There his ministerial labors, as also the labors of Lewis Chastain and Valentine Cook, were greatly blessed. A very large class of lively, excellent members was formed, who met at the house of old Mr. Smith, father of Henry Smith, of Pilgrim's Rest, near Baltimore. The latter, in his 'Recollections,' speaks of Dr. Tiffin's sermons as 'pathetic and powerful.' Although the doctor commenced preaching before receiving license for that purpose, it was evident that he had not run before he was sent. Yet the cross was almost insupportably heavy, and he had at first well nigh sunk under it. He told me himself; more than thirty-five years ago, that, attending at one of his appointments — perhaps one of the first that had been made for him — seeing the people flock in, in multitudes, and knowing that mere curiosity to hear him had brought most of them out, his heart failed within him. He slipped out some half an hour before the time appointed for commencing the meeting, and hastily retired to a deep forest near at hand, with the intention of hiding himself till the congregation should become tired of waiting and disperse. But it would not do. He could not flee from the vivid conviction, 'a dispensation of the Gospel is committed to me, and woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel.' In his agony the perspiration fell in large drops from his face, and his garments were wet with its profuse flow. He felt almost involuntarily impelled to return to the house, which was now full to overflowing, with great numbers outside. Scarcely able to stand, he commenced the service 'in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.' But he soon felt divinely aided, and preached with great liberty, for sinners were cut to the heart, and God honored his servant in the sight of all the people."

Tiffin had a family, and could not, therefore, enter the itinerancy in these hard times, when the marriage of a preacher was synonymous with his location; but he was a man of extraordinary energy and zeal, and henceforth, through his long life, was a representative of his denomination. In two years he was ordained a deacon by Asbury. The bishop admired and loved him heartily, was often entertained at his house, and, it is said, dispensed, in his ordination, with the usual prerequisites of recommendations from three elders, three deacons, etc., and "without solicitation or suggestion of any one, conferred the office upon him impromptu." [21] Scott had no apprehension, as he received the young physician into the Church, that he was providing, not only a great man for the denomination, but a great friend for his own time of need. Now, eleven years later, as he wandered to Chilicothe, he found that Tiffin had also wandered thither from Virginia, and was already a commanding citizen, preaching the gospel in all the surrounding country, organizing Churches, turning his medical practice into a means of religious ministration to the sick and dying, gratuitously dealing out medicines, with his characteristic liberality, to the poor, who came to him from great distances, courageously and successfully performing difficult cases of surgery, and sheltering with profuse liberality Methodist preachers, his "excellent wife receiving them as messengers from God." "She was," says a veteran itinerant, "one of the most conscientious and heavenly-minded women I ever saw — a mother in our Israel, indeed." [22] She was one of those select "women of Methodism" who ministered to Asbury, and who were honored with his affectionate friendship. Asbury, on visiting Chilicothe in 1808, went to her tomb and made the following record: "Within sight of this beautiful mansion lies the precious dust of Mary Tiffin. It was as much as I could do to forbear weeping as I mused over her speaking grave. How mutely eloquent! Ah, the world knows little of my sorrows; little knows how dear to me are my many friends, and how deeply I feel their loss; but they all die in the Lord, and this shall comfort me. I delivered my soul here. May this dear family feel an answer to Mary Tiffin's prayers." Boehm, who was with the bishop, adds: "On our tour in 1811 we visited Governor Worthington, her brother, and he requested the bishop to write an appropriate inscription for the tombstone of his sister. He took his pen and wrote this: 'And Mary hath chosen that good part that shall not be taken away from her.' These words are upon the tombstone of that excellent woman." Boehm at the same visit thus characterizes the doctor: "Several sermons of great pathos and power were preached on the camp-ground. One of the most remarkable was by Dr. Tiffin, ex-governor of Ohio, from 'What is a man profited,' etc. The doctor threw his whole soul into it as he dwelt upon the soul's immense value and its amazing loss, and the fact that nothing can compensate for such a loss. His appeals to the heart and conscience were almost irresistible. His voice was musical, his gestures, were rapid, and his countenance expressed all his tongue uttered. There was a mighty work among the people during this day, and it continued all night."

The doctor became the chief citizen of Ohio; it was still a territory; he was one of its legislators; was elected a member of the convention which formed its state constitution, and soon after had the signal honor to be elected its first state governor "without opposition." He served in this high office a second term, and defeated the conspiracy of Aaron Burr in a manner that called forth the written thanks of President Jefferson, who, in commending the conduct of the citizens of the state, said of its governor, "that in declaring that you have deserved much of your country, I do but express the grateful sentiments of every fellow-citizen in it." Tiffin was afterward chosen Senator in Congress, and held other places of trust. He was an honor to his denomination, and his influence, for it was one of its greatest early advantages in the West. He died, after severe sufferings, in the assured hope of the gospel, in 1829, a man "never excelled," said the public journal of his city, "in the various relations of parent, husband, Christian, and citizen." [24] In stature he was about five feet six inches, full and robust, with a capacious head, a round, florid face, and remarkably expressive features; in conversation vivid, direct, and intelligent; in the pulpit systematic and energetic. "His discourses were delivered with great animation and with eloquence and power. In the country around Chilicothe, where he had so often preached, he was deservedly very popular, his labors in the pulpit were much sought after, and at quarterly and camp-meetings he was always assigned one, at least, of the chief appointments on the Sabbath. To his active labors and influence the Church is more indebted than to any other man for the introduction and establishment of Methodism in Chilicothe and the surrounding country." [25]

He sympathized tenderly with the suffering itinerants. To the young preachers especially he gave inspiriting counsels, writing to them with the tenderness of a father, being anxious that they should keep up their energy and heroism. To one of them he wrote: "I feel glad also to hear of your getting so big and strong, hoping thereby you will be better enabled to cry aloud and spare not. But take care, if this be not the consequence, that it don't fill up your silver pipe, and make you like an overgrown drone bee, that always makes a buzzing, and drives no sting. If this should be the case, which God forbid, send me word, and I will endeavor to find you a prescription to remedy it. Watch and pray, and I hope my God will make you a polished shaft in his quiver. Be humble; endeavor to get freed of a man-fearing and man-pleasing spirit. Simply drink into the spirit of the Gospel, preach for God, and pray for poor, dear sinners; and I hope and believe God will give you to see his pleasure prosper in your hands. Blessed be God, my wife and self are bound for glory. We do feel ourselves advancing in the divine life, and God does dwell in our hearts. O how many sweet times I have with the sick, poor sinners, when the hand of God is upon them; then their hearts are tender, and I can bring them on their knees before him. I think, if I know my heart, I only want to live to and for God. But O my weakness, my weakness! What a field is before me for doing good if I had but grace enough to redeem every moment of precious time. O brother, pray for poor me, and improve every opportunity of writing to me. Bless God, I am happy while writing to you, and feel as if I only wanted wings and an opening in this clay temple to creep out, that I might fly away to my Saviour's arms. I think they would be open to receive me."

Scott was welcomed to Chilicothe by his old friend and convert. He sent for his family, and settled there. Tiffin gave him employment in a clerkship, and promoted his legal business and studies. He was elected secretary to the convention for the formation of the state constitution. When Tiffin was elected governor, Scott succeeded him in the clerkship of several courts, and at the first township election of Chilicothe, under the constitution, he was elected a justice of the peace, the first one commissioned under the state organization. He was also elected secretary of the first state senate, an office which he held several years, till he was appointed, by the Legislature, a judge of the Supreme Court, whose chief justice he became one year later.

In these prominent civil places he acquitted himself with honor, for his native capacity was much above mediocrity, and his diligent application both to study and labor rendered him master of his position. His official rank secured him public influence, and this he, like his friend Tiffin, consecrated to religion. They were two of the strongest pillars of Methodism in Ohio, and to their public character and labors it owes much of its rapid growth and predominant sway in that magnificent state. Had Scott been able, after his marriage, to remain in the itinerant ministry, he would probably have attained, as his friends predicted, its highest office and dignity; but it may be doubted whether he or Tiffin could, even as its chief bishop, have served their denomination, or their generation, more effectively than they did in their long and honorable lives as local preachers and public citizens. Ohio reveres the memory of her Methodist first governor and first chief justice, and has given the name of the former to two of her towns. In following Scott northward, in order to complete, at one view, the outline of his career, we have anticipated, somewhat, important events of our narrative, for we leave him and Tiffin representatives of Methodism in Ohio before we have witnessed its introduction into the great "Northwestern Territory." The anticipation, however, is but brief; we have already seen Kobler, its first regular itinerant, tending toward that region; and before the close of our present period, its recognized founder in Ohio, a local preacher, had reached it." In the account of Henry Smith, a convert of Judge Scott, in Virginia, and himself a western pioneer, we have met, in Western Virginia, an obscure but most interesting character by the name of Francis McCormick. McCormick, "a powerful man" with the fist and the ax, was a young fellow-convert, and a fellow-exhorter, with Smith. We have seen both essaying their first ability as "exhorters" in "Davenport's Meeting-house," at the "head of Bullskin," a place where Tiffin also had often preached. Smith broke down in the attempt, though "one poor sinner cried out for mercy" under his opening prayer. McCormick rose for his rescue, and conducted the service with such "liberty" and effect that the soul-melting power of the Lord came down, and was felt through all the house." [28]

The name of Francis McCormick was destined to become dear in the hearts, and great in the history, of his people as the founder of Methodism in the most important section of the North American continent the Northwestern Territory. A Methodist bishop, meditating at the grave of the pioneer, has recorded some of the most important facts of his life. [29] He was born in Frederick County, Va., June 3, 1764. His parents were good Presbyterians, but his father became a distiller, ceased to pray in his family, and not only fell away from but opposed religion. His son grew up "a wild and wicked" youth. He heard William Jessop preach, a man of powerful eloquence. [30] As he saw the people weeping and praying under the discourse, "his heart was filled with madness," and he turned away with the determination to witness such scenes no more. He forbade his young wife to attend them, yet she could not but perceive that, in spite of his resolution, his conscience was thoroughly awakened. We have already seen how the conversion of his young friend Smith, about this time, affected him. He returned with his wife to the Methodist meetings; and after a sermon he remained to witness a love-feast, of which he later wrote: "The simplicity, love, and union that prevailed I was quite charmed with. Surely, thought I, these are the people of God. Yet for all this, when the invitation was given for people to join society, my wife being one of the first to join, I was so angry that I went off home and left her. I was so filled with the wicked one that I scarcely knew what to think of myself; for I then as much believed she was doing right as I should now if any other person was becoming a member." He could not, however, silence his awakened conscience. He became the more interested in the Methodists when he learned that they "prohibited drunkenness and tippling," for his life in the house of his father had convinced him of their ruinous consequences. He describes himself as "miserable beyond expression," when he went to hear Lewis Chasteen, another itinerant of eminent usefulness. "The preacher," he writes, "was at prayer when we arrived. When he took his text, 'And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the tree; therefore every tree,' etc., it appeared to me that all the wickedness that I had ever committed stared me in my face. A trembling seized me as though all my flesh would drop from my bones. He preached like a son of thunder, as he truly was. After public service he gave an invitation to such as desired to become members to join. There were none but members present, except myself and a young man by the name of Murphy, who had for some time been under awakenings; but he declined, like Felix, for a more convenient season. Living in the midst of about a hundred relatives, all enemies to the Methodists, how is it possible that I can stand to be opposed by such a multitude! It staggered me in a wonderful manner; but it appeared as though I heard a voice from heaven, 'My Spirit shall not always strive with man.' This had such a powerful effect on my mind that I was resolved to make the trial, let the consequences be what they might. Christmas that year (1790) came on Sunday, and I joined on the Tuesday preceding. The Saturday following, my father, who lived with one of my brothers, sent for me to come and see him. There were a number collected of brothers, and their relatives by marriage, to keep Christmas in their and my old way, and I have always thought that their aim was to get me intoxicated. Be that as it may, they missed it. They were very kind indeed, more so than common, and said nothing to me about religion till I refused to drink with them; then my father said, 'How came you to join the Methodists without my leave?' I told him that I did not know it was my duty to obtain his consent; and added, in the language of Scripture, 'Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.' He replied, 'What have you done that you need repentance? Have you killed anybody? You must leave the Methodists, and I will give you the farm to live on, and treat you as a son.' I replied that I thanked him for all the pains and trouble he had been at in bringing me up, but to leave the Methodists was out of the question, for I would not leave them for all the land in the world. He then flew into a great rage, and told me to begone, or he would burn the house over my head. A number of those present laughed and made sport of me, and my poor wicked heart resented it for a moment, till I thought, 'just such a one was I a few days ago.' But upon the whole I thought I could have passed through the fire rather than draw back to perdition, and I can truly say that none of these things moved me. The next day, Sunday, I went to meeting. Chasteen preached again from 'There was a little city, and few men within it,' etc. In the discussion of the subject I saw the dreadful situation our world is in through sin, and the wisdom of the poor wise man in seeking redemption from death and destruction. It was then that my load of guilty woe was removed; and how did I feel? All peace and joy. But I had not the witness of the Spirit for some days. Finally, I began to reflect on the trouble I had just been in to mourn because I could not grieve for my sins. At last I discovered by faith that they were all forgiven. Then the Spirit bore witness with my spirit that I was a child of God; the peace and joy that followed no language could express. I wondered at my own stupidity, and that of all the rest of Adam's race, that they could have anything against religion; and I could truly say with David, 'I was glad when they said, Come let us go up to the house of the Lord.' I have thought a thousand times of the lengths of sin I ran into before I was twenty-six years of age, such as drinking, Sabbath-breaking, etc., and no one admonished me; but so soon as I began to go to meeting, losing time, as they called it, the cry was, 'You will be ruined!' 'Take care that you are not deceived!' 'The Methodists will all come to nothing!' and what is still more astonishing, it is the cry of some people down to the present day."

His fidelity had its reward. His fallen father sent for him to pray by his death-bed, and the faithful son "had access to the mercy-seat," and ever after consoled himself with the hope that his parent was at last reclaimed and saved. Valentine Cook crossed his path, and appointed him class-leader. He began to exhort, and at last to preach. Being married, he could not hope to enter the itinerancy; but he now devoted himself to evangelical labors, manual work being but the means of his support, while the promotion of religion was the task of his life. Like the martyr Tucker, and other local preachers of that day, he emigrated, in 1795 to Kentucky, more to preach the gospel than to get gain. He settled in Bourbon County, but was soon dissatisfied with position. Though of little cultivation, he was a man of the clearest common sense, and, above all, of that practical moral sense which, for the affairs of this world, as well as of the next, is the highest prudence, the best philosophy of life. Being a native of a slave-holding state, he had seen, with most of the Methodists of his day, that slavery was not only a profound moral wrong, but an incubus [Oxford Dict. incubus = oppressive nightmare — DVM] on domestic and industrial life. It was extending around him in Kentucky, and he resolved to escape from it, with his young family, into the Northwestern Territory. He crossed the Ohio, and built his log-cabin at Milford, in Clermont County. Seven years afterward he removed to what is now known as Salem, but for many years was called "McCormick's Settlement," about ten miles from the site of Cincinnati. "It was then little better than a wilderness; now it is one of those rural spots where the eye is feasted with beauty, and the ear with melody, making one dream of Arcadian loveliness. In its quiet graveyard his ashes now slumber."

At Milford he found the settlers thoroughly demoralized, for lack of the means of religion, and forthwith began his good work inviting them to assemble to hear the word, which he proclaimed to them "as the voice of one crying in the wilderness." He formed a class there, the first Methodist society organized in the Northwestern Territory. He went out preaching along the settlements, and soon established two other classes, one near the present town of Lockland, the other near Columbia. He made urgent appeals to the Kentucky itinerants, informing them of the new and open door of the great Northwest, and calling for immediate help. John Kobler, as we shall hereafter see, soon responded, and became the first regular Methodist preacher north and west of the Ohio River. We shall have occasion, before long, to follow him, and, thenceforward, will rise before us the gigantic Methodism of the great northern states of the Mississippi Valley.

McCormick was a man worthy of his peculiar distinction as the Methodistic founder of Ohio. Born and trained in the wilds of the Virginia mountains, he could "endure hardness as a good soldier of the Lord Jesus," amid the privations of the West. He had a remarkably sound judgment, a quick but steady view of what was befitting or expedient; was a "wise and judicious man," and exceedingly candid, accessible and conciliatory in his manners. He was calmly but invincibly courageous; and in his youth served two campaigns in the war of the Revolution, assisting in the siege of Yorktown, and witnessing the surrender of Cornwallis. Without remarkable talents as a preacher, his good sense, his earnestness, unction, and self-denying devotion, made him powerful. Withal, he had an imposing presence. He was robust and tall, fully six feet in height, and weighed two hundred and forty pounds. "His gigantic body was surmounted by a well-developed head and a florid face, expressive of good temper, intelligence, and benevolence. He was the center and charm of the social company which his position and character drew around him. He possessed the largest liberality: house, table, money, time, and influence were freely devoted to God and his Church. His home was for many years a preaching-place, and not infrequently the people would come forty miles or more to hear the word of life. All such found cordial welcome, not only to a free gospel, but to a free entertainment. He lived not for himself; but for the Church and the cause of God." A giant, a pioneer, a soldier, a Methodist preacher, he was the fitting man for his great historic mission.

Henry Smith, our own venerated contemporary, of "Pilgrim's Rest," was now also itinerating in the West, having gone, as we have seen, to Clarksburgh Circuit, on the Monongahela, Va., in 1794. He shared there the trials and the triumphs common to his ultramontane fellow-laborers. At his first appointment, about fifteen miles beyond Clarksburgh, he gives us a picture of the western congregations of the times. He found there "a good Methodist society," under the care of the devoted Joseph Chieuvrant, "a respectable local preacher." [31] The congregation came from miles around. "They were," says he, "all backwoods people, and came to meeting in backwoods style, a considerable congregation. I looked round and saw one old man who had shoes on his feet. The preacher wore Indian moccasins; every man, woman, and child besides was barefooted. The old women had on what we then called short-gowns, and the rest had neither short nor long gowns. This was a novel sight to see for a Sunday congregation. Chieuvrant, in his moccasins, could have preached all round me; but I was a stranger, and, withal, the circuit preacher, and must preach, of course. I did my best, and soon found if there were no shoes and fine dresses in the congregation, there were attentive hearers and feeling hearts; for the melting power of the Lord came down upon us, and we felt that the great Head of the Church was in the midst of us. In meeting the class I heard the same humble, loving, religious experience that I had often heard in better-dressed societies. If this scene did not make a backwoodsman of me outright, it at least reconciled me to the people, and I felt happy among them."

They were still exposed here to the Indians, and Chieuvrant not only preached in moccasins, but shouldered his gun and followed the trail in pursuit of the murderous savages. In some places Smith saw the men coming to meeting with their rifles on their shoulders, guarding their families, then setting their guns in a corner of the house till after meeting, and returning in the same order. "O what a poor chance," he exclaims, these people had to be religious! and yet I found some very pious souls among them. They could give as clear and scriptural an account of conviction for sin and conversion as any people. In conversation with some of these Christian hunters, I was told that when they were under conviction they could take no game. The game was always on the flight before they saw or heard it. The mind was absent, and the eye and the ear would not answer the purpose. We had but one half-finished log meeting-house in the whole circuit. We labored hard, and suffered not a little, and did not get the half of our sixty-four dollars for support. We traveled through all weathers and dangers, over bad roads and slippery hills, and waded deep waters, having the Monongahela to cross seven times every round, and few ferries. Our fare was plain enough. Sometimes we had venison and bear meat in abundance. Our lodgings were often uncomfortable. Most of my clothes became threadbare, and some worn out, and I had no money to buy new ones. I had to put up one night with a strange family, where I was obliged to keep on my overcoat to hide the rents in my clothes."

Methodist laymen were made the braver by their religion to defend the settlements from the savages. Some of them were noted Indian fighters. There remains a letter from the famous Major J. McColloch to the western itinerant, Daniel Hitt, dated "Ohio," 1794, which shows the spirit of the times on this frontier. He writes: "I am just going to love-feast at Brother Meek's, hoping to meet the Lord, and get my spiritual strength renewed. I thank God for his goodness to me day by day in giving me a heart to serve him. I know and feel my unworthiness, but thank God that I am what I am; and through his grace I hope to meet him in glory. I am still commanding the Rangers, and, before this reaches you, it may be my lot to fall by the hand of a savage enemy; but the Lord's will be done. I thank you for your visit to my house, and hope, if you should come near us, you will always call upon us. I saw your brother at quarterly meeting, but I had not the pleasure of speaking to him. I hope that the bishop will send him to this circuit. Please to write to me by the preachers that come; and may the God of glory make you and me more zealous to do his will, and grant us grace so to live that we may be worthy to praise him in endless glory. Pray for me, your unworthy brother, that I may be able to stand, and not turn my back to run from my enemies, neither spiritual nor temporal, and that the Lord may enable me to walk humbly before him every day of my life. I remain your unworthy brother in Christ." [32] Henry Boehm, traveling with Asbury through the Redstone country in 1808, wrote: "We were entertained at Major Samuel McColloch's. He and his brother John were celebrated in the annals of Indian warfare. He it was who, when pursued by the Indians, made that terrible leap of three hundred feet down a precipice with his horse into the river, and thus mercifully escaped out of their murderous hands. The leap of General Putnam at Horseneck was nothing compared with this. He was an excellent member of the Methodist Church, and his house was one of the choice homes where the bishop and other preachers were made welcome."

In his old age and retirement the genial veteran, Henry Smith, related with entertaining zest the adventures of his youth in these wilds: "I have often rode," he said, "fifteen or twenty miles through the woods where no one lived, the people having fled from danger; and I rode alone, for I never had any guard but the angels. The tales of woe that were told me in almost every place where there was danger; the places pointed out where murder had been committed; sleeping in houses where the people who were inured to these things were afraid to go out of doors after sunset; I say, riding alone, under these circumstances, was far from being agreeable. I was often in danger in crossing rivers and swimming creeks. I found the people remarkably kind and sociable. Many pleasant hours we spent together by the side of our large log fires in the log-cabins conversing on various subjects; but religion was generally our delightful theme. Our hearts were sometimes made to burn within us while we talked of Jesus and his love. It is true, some of us smoked the pipe with them, but we really thought there was no harm in that, for we had no anti-tobacco societies among us then; and yet some of us rose at four o'clock in the morning to pray and read our Bibles. If we could get a lamp or candle we preferred it; if not, we read by firelight. Many times I have begged to have a pallet before the fire, that I might not oversleep myself. We were also regular in our hours of retirement for prayer. When we had a closet for the purpose we went to it; if not, we went to the woods, in summer; but when there was danger, always at an early hour. In winter, or when it rained, we sought a place in a fodder-house, or somewhere else where we could be secreted. More than once I have been startled by dogs bouncing out when I entered into the fodder-house, or coming upon me at my devotions, and assailing me as an intruder. If I did not enjoy the privilege of private prayer, particularly in the evening, I felt uncomfortable in mind. And we were not satisfied with having said our prayers; our doctrine was, Pray till you get your soul made happy. As to preaching to a congregation without having previously been upon our knees, and asked divine assistance and God's blessing upon the word, (when opportunity offered,) we would have been afraid of being confounded before them. We had few books. I had Wesley's Notes and Fletcher's Appeal, and, I believe, Wesley's Sermons, but no commentary on the Bible. The first time I saw Brown's Dictionary of the Bible I would have purchased it at any price if I had been able to procure it."

In 1795 he was sent to the famous Redstone Circuit. At the Baltimore Conference of 1796, "Asbury," he says, "called for volunteers to go to Kentucky, and fixed his eye upon me as one. I said, 'Here am I, send me.' I was ordained in a private room, before Conference opened; and in a few hours after my ordination John Watson and myself were on horseback, on our way to Kentucky, almost before any one knew we were going. We pushed across the Allegheny Mountain to Yonghiongheny River, in hopes of getting into a family boat down the Ohio, for then there was no road through the wilderness. We had two families and eleven horses (ours made thirteen) in the boat. Two or three of our family had the measles on board. We were much crowded; but after floating, and sometimes rowing, night and day, through rain, wind, and smoke, for nine days and nights, we landed safely at Brooke's Landing, Mason County, Kentucky, December 1796. We were very uncomfortably situated, but we were going on the Lord's business, and our minds were stayed on him and kept in peace. We had family prayer when circumstances would admit of it. The wind blew from every point, and it was cold, and we were obliged to have fire in a large kettle. The smoke annoyed us very much, but we were mercifully preserved. How much better we were off than poor Tucker and Carter, two Methodist preachers, who were killed by the Indians in going down the river!" He hastened into the interior and found Poythress, who sent him to Salt River Circuit. For some years he was a successful pioneer of the Church, "traveling round every circuit in Kentucky and visiting every society," sharing fully the trials and triumphs of the mighty men who were then abroad there, Poythress, McHenry, Burke, Kobler, and their compeers. "Methodism," he remarks, "had spread, when I went out, nearly over the state, though opposed everywhere, and by nearly every sort of people." He passed also into the northwestern territory, and became a co-laborer of Kobler and McCormick.

In the great trans-Allegheny field we meet again Valentine Cook, that "wonderful man" of whom marvelous traditions are rife in the Church, from the interior lakes of New York, through the Wyoming and Tioga Mountains, and Redstone and Holston countries, down to the remotest regions of Kentucky and Tennessee. He was on the Pittsburgh and Clarksburgh Circuits, and the Pittsburgh District, during these years, and afterward pushed into Kentucky, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was considered the most learned man of the Methodist ministry of his day. His early education, at Cokesbury, and his devotion to biblical studies and the classic languages, together with a peculiar, original capacity of mind, very much like genius, gave him an intellectual vigor which, combined with extraordinary moral force and unction, rendered him a sort 'of prodigy among his brethren.' [33]

Asbury, as has been intimated, was kept, for some time, from the West by his infirm health; but in April, 1795, he again ventured over the mountains into, at least, the verge of Tennessee. As he entered the heights, in Wilkes County, N. C., he was depressed at the semi-barbarous condition of the people. "O Lord!" he exclaims, "help me to go through good and evil report, prosperity and adversity, storms and calms, kindness and unkindness, friends and enemies, life and death, in the spirit and practice of the gospel of Jesus Christ! We came in the evening to the house of a poor, honest man. Bless God! we can enter the poor cabins and find shelter. The people are kind and free with what they have. My soul enjoys sweet peace; but I see an awful danger of losing that simple walking and living in the enjoyment of God. I observed a day of rigid fasting; this I cannot do more than once a month. I am frequently obliged to go on three cups of tea, with a little bread, for eight or nine hours, and to ride many miles, and preach, and perform my other ministerial labors. I stood the fatigue, and sleeping three in a bed, better than I expected. We hasted to Earnest's, on Nolachucky River, where we held our Western Conference. Here six brethren from Kentucky met us, and we opened the Conference with twenty-three preachers, fifteen of whom were members. We received every man's account of himself and his late labors; and inquired of each man's character among his brethren. Our business was conducted with great love and harmony. Our brethren have built a meeting-house, and I must needs preach the first sermon, which I did on Exod. xx, 24. Notwithstanding it was a time of great scarcity, we were most kindly entertained." We have already been at this place and learned the story of "Father Earnest's" singular conversion. The good local preacher now rejoiced in the honor of having nearly all the itinerant heroes of the West around him in his own chapel. "On the 1st of May," continues the bishop, "we rode thirty miles to Holstein, without food for man or horse. In addition to the heat of the weather and fatigue I have gone through, I have not slept five hours a night, one night with another, for five nights past." On reaching Fincastle he says: "The toils of this journey have been great, the weather sultry, the rides long, and roads rough. We suffered from irregularity in food and lodging; although the people are very kind, and give us the best they have, and that without fee or reward, so that I have only spent about two shillings in riding about two hundred miles. I hope posterity will be bettered by my feeble efforts. I have ridden two hundred and twenty miles in seven days and a half, and am so exceedingly outdone and oppressed with pain, weariness, and want of sleep, that I have hardly courage to do anything. Hail, happy day of rest! It draws nigh, and this labor and toil will soon be at an end!"

He hastened eastward, but in about one year (April, 1796) he again set his face toward the wilderness, writing, as he ascended the mountains, "Ah, what a round of continual running is my life! Of late, feeble as I am, I cannot help thinking of Cumberland, in Tennessee, and trying to go there. If I must go to Kentucky, I think it is time to go to Cumberland also. I ascended about one mile up a mountain, and came to Davenport's. Here I felt deep dejection of mind as well as great weakness of body, and as if I could lie down and die; owing in some measure, I presume, to the great fatigue I underwent in ascending the mountain, which was very steep. Saturday, 16, we set off at six o'clock, and directed our course up Tow River; thence up the Rocky Creek through the gap of the Yellow Mountain, to the head waters of Tow River. We had to ride till eight o'clock at night. My mind is still under deep depression."

Passing on through the gap of the Yellow Mountain, he was again in Tennessee, "at Dawe's," where he preached to two hundred settlers, "met the society, and had a melting season," and on Tuesday, April 19, writes: "The preachers came in from Kentucky and Cumberland. Wednesday, 20, our Conference began in great peace, and thus it ended. We had only one preacher for each circuit in Kentucky, and one for Green Circuit in Tennessee. Myself being weak, and my horse still weaker, I judged it impracticable to attempt going through the wilderness to Kentucky, and have concluded to visit Nolachucky. I wrote an apology to the brethren in Kentucky for my not coming, and informed them of the cause. Monday, 25, on the banks of Nolachucky I parted with our dear suffering brethren, going through the howling wilderness. I feel happy in God. The preachers, although young men, appear to be solemn and devoted to God, and doubtless are men who may be depended upon. Sunday, May 1, we came to Acuff's Chapel. I found the family sorrowful and weeping, on account of the death of Francis Acuff, who from a fiddler became a Christian; from a Christian; a preacher; and from a preacher, I trust, a glorified saint. He died in the work of the Lord in Kentucky. I found myself assisted in preaching on Ephes. ii, 1, 2. The house was crowded, and I trust they did not come together in vain. I was somewhat alarmed at the sudden death of Reuben Ellis, who hath been in the ministry upward of twenty years; a faithful man of God, of slow, but very solid parts: he was an excellent counselor, and steady yokefellow in Jesus. My mind is variously exercised as to future events — whether it is my duty to continue to bear the burden I now bear, or whether I had better retire to some other land. I am not without fears that a door will be opened to honor, ease, or interest, and then farewell to religion in the American Methodist Connection; but death may soon end all these thoughts, and quiet all these fears."

He was, in fact, seriously thinking of the resignation of his episcopal office, and he tendered it at a subsequent General Conference. He was worn out, but was to continue to battle with his infirmities, and travel on yet for a score of years, dropping at last from the pulpit into the grave; the only death befitting such a life.

"I hobbled! on," he continues, "over the ridge through Russell County," where he greeted John Kobler. Hastening through Wythe County, "we rode," he says, "forty miles to Indian Creek, about fifteen miles above the mouth. We had no place to dine until we arrived at Father C.'s, about six o'clock. If I could have regular food and sleep I could stand the fatigue I have to go through much better; but this is impossible under some circumstances. To sleep four hours, and ride forty miles without food or fare, is hard; but we had water enough in the rivers and creeks. I shall have ridden nearly one thousand miles on the western waters before I leave them. I have been on the waters of Nolachucky to the mouth of Clinch; on the north, middle, and south branches of Holston; on New River, Green Brier, and by the head springs of Monongahela. If I were able I should go from Charleston, S. C., a direct course, five hundred miles, to Nolachucky; thence two hundred and fifty miles to Cumberland; thence one hundred to Kentucky; thence one hundred miles through that state, and two hundred to Saltsburgh; thence two hundred to Green Brier; thence two hundred to Red Stone, and three hundred to Baltimore. Ah, if I were young again! I was happy to have a comfortable night's sleep after a hard day's ride, and but little rest the night before. I have now a little time to refit, recollect, and write. Here forts and savages once had a being, but now peace and improvement."

Thus meager as are these bald outlines (all that remain of him) the great man nevertheless looms up before us amid these mountains, a giant, with moral proportions correspondent with the physical grandeur around him.

He held a small Conference at Rehoboth, in the Green Brier heights, and thence he pushed on to meet the pioneers of the Redstone country, in Western Pennsylvania, encountering appalling difficulties through the mountains. "Frequently," he writes, "we were in danger of being plucked off our horses by the boughs of the trees under which we had to ride. About seven o'clock, after crossing six mountains, and many rocky creeks and fords of Elk and Monongahela Rivers, we made the Valley of Distress, called by the natives Tyger's Valley. Thence we hastened on at the rate of forty-two miles a day. We had to ride four miles in the night, and went supperless to the Punchins, where we slept a little on hard lines. After encountering many difficulties, known only to God and ourselves, we came to Morgantown." After a Conference at Uniontown he returned to the East, but not to rest, as we have seen in following him to the North, to New England, to the farthest South.

Besides the itinerants heretofore mentioned, many yet young, but destined to become historical characters, had already entered, or were about to enter the greatest, such as Daniel Hitt, John Lindsey, Tobias Gibson, Benjamin Lakin, William, Beauchamp. William McKendree had been tending thither for some years, traveling a Virginia district which stretched beyond the Blue Ridge into the Green Brier Country; he was soon to enter Kentucky as the chieftain of Western Methodism, and to inaugurate a new era in its history. Robert R. Roberts was preparing for his episcopal career, in the woods, on the banks of the Little Chenango. James Quinn (who first led Roberts into public labors) was about to start on his first circuit. John Sale was being trained on the hardest circuit of Virginia, and was soon to make his way over the mountains. Thornton Fleming, whom we have met in the far North, was rapidly rising to that commanding influence which he long wielded in the old Pittsburgh Conference. John Collins, still in New Jersey, was seeking to save his soul, and leading his brother-in-law, the memorable Larner Blackman, into a holy life, both to become founders of the Church in the Northwest. James B. Finley, yet a youth, but a "mighty hunter," was pondering, in the Western woods, reports of the marvels of Methodism. Peter Cartwright, "naturally a wild, wicked boy, delighting in horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing," was studying, in the Kentucky wilderness, under Beverly Allen, and wondering at the strange news that reached him occasionally from the Methodist "Ebenezer" Church, a few miles to the south. Philip Gatch, whom we have so often met as one of the first two American itinerants, was preparing to leave his retreat in Virginia, and plunge into the wilds of Ohio, where he was to do good service for the Church. Methodism was, in short, putting on strength all through the settled regions of the West. It had now spread entirely over Kentucky and Tennessee; there was hardly a "block-house station" or "settlement" where the itinerants did not, at longer or shorter intervals, sound their trumpets, and it had commenced that march, that triumphant march, into the Northwestern Territory, in which it has continuously gone on from conquering to conquer. Log chapels were rising through the wilderness; there was probably not yet a single church of higher pretensions; cabins, barns, and the sheltering woods were the most common sanctuaries. By the end of this period, the autumn of 1796, there were west of the mountains four districts, twenty-three circuits, thirty-six traveling preachers, and six thousand five hundred Church members. [34] The few Methodists of Ohio were yet unreported. Tennessee had about 550, Kentucky about 1750; the remainder were in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia. The West had already much more than double the number reported from New England.

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ENDNOTES

1 The reader has noticed that my allusions to this early appointment have not been very positive. There seems to be no evidence, besides the recorded appointment, that Lambert went thither. Returns of its members were made before the appointment. Appointments were very uncertain in those days, the appointees being often sent elsewhere: I have increasing doubts that Lambert was the first trans-Allegheny Methodist itinerant. It seems more probable that this honor belongs to Poythress. Compare vol. n, pp. 346-7and 337. At least Poythress crossed the Alleghenies in the same year that Lambert did.

2 Following Quinn, I was led, in vol. ii, p. 339, into the mistake of calling this preacher Solomon Breese; the Minutes name him Samuel. Probably a typographical error escaped in Quinn's book.

3 See particularly vol. ii, pp. 51, 347.

4 Vol. ii, p. 106.

5 Vol. ii, p. 35.

6 Bancroft vi, 34; Day's Hist. Coll. of Pennsylvania, 336. Monette's Hist. of Disc., etc., in Valley of Mississippi, i, 345.

7 Bancroft, vi, 34.

8 Finley's Autobiography, p. 96.

9 I have here to correct an error into which I was led by a citation from Quinn, in vol. ii, p. 340, where John Doddridge, of Western Pennsylvania, who afterward became a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, is said to have been the first Methodist preacher raised up in the West. McHenry, "who was faithful to the end," preceded him in the itinerancy one year.

10 Bishop Bascom's Sketch of McHenry in the Southern Methodist Quarterly Review, 1849, p. 415. Bascom does not say whether the "pioneer preacher" was a local or itinerant one. In either case the facts, if accurate in date, show that Methodism reached this region a year earlier than is usually supposed, thus confirming my conjecture in vol. ii, 347. Finley (Sketches of Western Methodism) says, McHenry was among the first fruits of Western Methodism."

11 Hon. John Rowan, in Sprague, p. 144.

12 Bishop Morris, in Sprague.

13 Ibid.

14 Vol. ii, p. 355.

15 See his autobiography in Finley's "Sketches of Western Methodism."

16 Vol. ii, p. 358.

17 Rev. Dr. Sehon, in Annals of Southern Methodism, vol. ii, p. 271.

18 Rev. Jacob Young's Autobiography, etc., p. 313.

19 Letter of Rev. Dr. A. Poe to the author.

20 Finley's Sketches, etc., p. 164.

21 Finley's Sketches, p. 264.

22 Rev. Henry Smith's "Recollections of an Old Itinerant," p. 327.

23 Boehm's Reminiscences, p.198.

24 The "Scioto Gazette," of Chilicothe, Aug. 12, 1829.

25 Samuel Williams, Esq., in Finley's Sketches, p. 256.

26 Letter to Daniel Hitt, So. Meth. Quart. Rev., Apr., 1859, p. 294.

27 We have some dim evidence that Francis Clark (who is said to have formed the first Methodist Society in Kentucky) preached as early as 1793 in Fort Washington, now Cincinnati. "He visited and preached at Fort Washington, where Cincinnati now stands, as early as 1793, two years before General Wayne's treaty with the Indians. For this historic fact we have the testimony of Samuel Brown, who was a member of the first Methodist Society formed, and in good repute among them. He affirmed that he was in the fort at the time of Clark's visit, and that he was welcomed and respected as a messenger from God, regarded as exemplary in his conduct, and possessed of good gifts, as well as grace, and the people heard him gladly. He seems to have been a kind of invited missionary, who as he could obtain escorts, visited the various stations, block-houses, and military posts on the frontiers, where the people had to be concentrated for mutual protection. We have evidence for believing this was the same 'Francis Clark,' a local preacher, who was the honored pioneer of Methodism in Kentucky. He and John Durham, a class-leader, and a few of their neighbors, with their families, removed from Virginia about 1784; and Clark organized the first Methodist class ever formed in what was then called 'the far West,' about six miles from where Danville now stands." — Rev. J. F. Wright, in West. Chris. Adv., March 7, 1866.

28 Smith's "Recollections," etc., p. 246.

29 Bishop Clark, In "Ladies' Repository," March, 1860.

30 See vol. ii, p. 148.

31 See vol. ii, p. 341.

32 So. Meth. Quar. Rev., Oct., 1859, p. 620.

33 A pamphlet containing a report, by himself; of one of his famous western public debates on Baptism, shows rare excellencies of style, research, and logic.

34 I am not absolutely certain of these figures. In the Minutes of 1796 some four western circuits are repeated, and assigned to two presiding elders.

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