VOLUME 4 — BOOK VI — CHAPTER VIII
METHODISM IN THE WEST, 1804-1820

Geography of Western Methodism — Progress In Western Pennsylvania — Pittsburgh Conference — Robert R. Roberts' Hardships — Gruber — Usefulness of Shewel, a Local Preacher — Thomas Branch's Death in the Wilderness — A Society formed there — James B. Finley's Character — A great Western Camp-meeting — Finley's Conversion — His Labors and Sufferings — Sketch of William Swayze — Charles Elliott's Services — Alfred Brunson — Quinn in the Northwestern Territory — Whatcoat's Salutation — Jane Trimble — Review of Quinn's Labors — Primitive Camp-meetings — Growth of Methodism In Indiana — In Michigan

Again we turn to the "great West," the scene, in our day, of the greatest triumphs of Methodism. In the outset (1804) it is still the one "Western Conference," with its four districts: Holston, under John Wilson; Cumberland, under Lewis Garrett; Kentucky, under McKendree; Ohio, under Burke; these, besides the ultra-Allegheny districts of Baltimore Conference, the Greenbrier and Monongahela; while the Philadelphia Conference, by its Genesee District, takes in the Chenango Circuit, the scene of Robert R. Roberts's early Methodistic life. In 1806 the Mississippi District appears in the Minutes, under Learner Blackman. The successors of Tobias Gibson, seven adventurous itinerants, are invading the great Southwest. In 1809 the immense field, of the Northwestern Territory ceases to be a solitary district; the Ohio District divides into two, Miami and Muskingum, respectively commanded by Sale and Quinn, and the Indiana District, under Samuel Parker, is added; the latter has some significant names of circuits, among which are Illinois, traveled by Jesse Walker alone, and Missouri, by Abraham Amos. In 1810 Green River District, in the southwest, is added under Burke. In 1812 the title of "Green River" disappears, and we have three new districts, Nashville, Wabash, and Salt River. Indiana District gives place to that of Illinois, and Baltimore has another in the West, the Ohio, besides those of Greenbrier and Monongahela. Chenango passes from the jurisdiction of the Genesee Conference to the Ohio District. In 1813 the Northwestern Territory becomes an annual Conference, (by order of the General Conference of 1812,) under the title of Ohio. It comprehends much of Kentucky, and has six districts: Ohio, under Jacob Young; Muskingum, under David Young; Sciota, under Quinn; Miami, under Solomon Langdon; Kentucky, under Sale; Salt River, under James Ward. The name of the old "Western Conference" disappears, and that of Tennessee is first recorded, with seven grand districts: Holston, under James Axley, comprising the early mountain circuits; Nashville, under Blackman; Cumberland, under James Gwinn; Wabash, under Peter Cartwright; Illinois, under Jesse Walker; Mississippi, under Samuel Sellers; and Louisiana, under Miles Harper. The next year Green River District is added, but those of Mississippi and Louisiana disappear, with all their itinerants, hidden in the clouds of the British war. Their evangelists work on, however, holding informal Conferences among themselves. In 1815 their two districts reappear, and that of Missouri is recorded, detached from Illinois District, and commanded by Samuel H. Thompson.

In 1817, by the legislation of the General Conference of 1816, the western field had four Conferences: Ohio, with five districts, under Finley, Jacob and David Young, Moses Crume, and Samuel Parker, Missouri, with two districts, under Samuel H. Thompson and Jesse Walker; Tennessee, with six districts, under Marcus Lindsey, Thomas L. Douglass, John McGee, James Axley, Jesse Cunningham, and John Henninger; and Mississippi, with two districts, under Thomas Griffin and Ashley Hewitt. The ecclesiastical arrangements of the vast field remained thus, with some local variations and a rapid multiplication of districts, circuits, preachers, and members, down to the expiration of our present period, when the General Conference of 1820 created the Kentucky Conference, with five districts, under John Brown, Alexander Cummins, Jonathan Stamper, Marcus Lindsey, and Charles Holliday. Such was the geography of western Methodism in these years. We are now prepared to look over it more in detail, though it must be with but glances. Extraordinary triumphs of the gospel, and men of gigantic proportions, intellectual and moral, multiply too fast in the grand arena for our space. They are produced by their great local circumstances. God always thus provides what his people prepare themselves for. A Church or a State that projects great things cannot fall to have great men. We descend, then, the western slope of the Alleghenies again to witness achievements, wonders, seldom, if ever, paralleled in religious history great even in their faults — characters, labors, suffering; successes which molded young and semi-barbarous communities that have since become mighty states, empires of Christian civilization, controlling, in our day, the fate of the new world, and destined probably, before another century, to affect the destinies of the whole world.

I have recorded the rapid outspread of Methodism in the ultra Allegheny regions of Pennsylvania, the "Redstone country." It advanced victoriously there throughout the present period, blending on the North with the southwestern appointments of the Genesee Conference; on the West with the circuits of the itinerants from Kentucky, who were now ranging through nearly all the sparse settlements of Ohio; on the South with the labors of the mountaineer itinerants of the Holston country. It was still a single presiding elder's district successively under Fleming, James Hunter, Gruber, Jacob Young, and Finley, and appertained to the distant Baltimore Conference down to 1812, when, the Ohio Conference having been organized, it was placed under the jurisdiction of the latter. In 1820 its ample field was divided between the Genesee and the Ohio Conferences: two circuits, the Chautauqua and Lake, belonging to the former, under the presiding eldership of Gideon Draper, the remainder still belonging to the latter. This arrangement continued undisturbed till 1825, when the Pittsburgh Conference was organized, comprehending all the appointments in two large districts, the Erie and the Ohio. A renowned ecclesiastical body was this "old Pittsburgh Conference" to become; thronged with notable men, constituting the chief northern stronghold of Methodism between the East and the West, and yielding at last the Erie Conference on its north, and the Western Virginia on its south.

Robert R. Roberts returned from his more eastward labors in the autumn of 1804, and traveled the Erie Circuit, placing his family again in his log-cabin in Chenango.[1] His circuit required more than four hundred miles travel every four weeks "along blind paths found by marked trees, across swollen unbridged streams, over rugged precipices and high hills, now winding around steep, rocky mountain sides, and then plunging through deep miry morasses; he sometimes camped in the woods all night, wearied and hungry, resting his head upon the root of some forest tree, while his faithful horse stood tied up without a mouthful to eat, and not infrequently he encountered wild beasts, savage men, and venomous serpents." In his second year on the circuit it was so enlarged as to require six weeks' travel around, and a sermon every day. He subsequently labored on Pittsburgh (1807) and West Wheeling (1808) circuits, thus traversing nearly the whole field, and no man excelled him in work or hardships. He passed again to the eastward, (in 1809,) and thence (in 1816) to his continental diocese as Bishop.

Gruber, appointed to the district in 1810, was in his element among its rude scenes and great revivals. It was called the Monongahela District, and reached to the Alleghenies on the east, to the Grenbrier Mountains of Virginia on the south, to the farthest white settlements of Ohio on the west, to Lake Erie on the north, comprehending ten vast circuits. He held numerous camp-meetings, convenient occasions for the dispersed population, and the whole region was pervaded with religious interest. Methodism had effectually, though slowly, broken into the Western Reserve by the labors of Shewel and Bostwick. The former a local preacher; whom we have seen working for the Church in Western Virginia, and penetrating to the Reserve at the beginning of the century, now rejoiced in the spiritual harvest around him, and, after toiling through the week with his hands, went about on Sunday, usually on foot, to distant settlements, holding meetings and organizing societies. Like McCormick, of Ohio, and other lay evangelists, he was practically an apostle in the wilderness. He even moved his residence to extend his religious labors. Passing from Deerfield he settled in Hartstown, Portage County, Ohio, in 1814, and began preaching in all the neighboring regions, besides turning his own cabin into a Sabbath "appointment." He formed many classes. " Thus," says the local historian, [2] "did this faithful old pioneer find his way into the new settlements, breaking up new ground, and after raising up societies, he would hand them over to the preachers on the circuit, and then seek out new places of labor. 'Father' Shewel was a terror to the wicked, and often incurred their displeasure by his severity. One good Presbyterian lady was so exasperated at the severity of his remarks one day that she said, 'Father Shewel was no more fit to preach the gospel than a chestnut-burr was fit to be an eyeball;' but soon afterward, hearing a man who had been very wicked date his conversion from Shewel's preaching, recalled the uncharitable expression, and became a great admirer of the man."

Jacob Young, whose itinerant adventures in Kentucky and the Holston Mountains we have witnessed, traveled this district for three years like a herald, directing, and inspiriting with his own energy, a powerful corps of preachers, who made their way to the obscurest settlements. They reached at last (about 1812) the place where Thomas Branch had met his affecting death in the wilderness on his way from New England to the far West, as heretofore recorded. It was called North East, and is in Erie County, Penn. There was not a Methodist with twenty miles of the dying hero, but Young's pioneers soon formed a society on the spot, some of its members probably being the fruits of Branch's last exhortations and prayers. A local preacher from Canada built his cabin there, and did good service for the young society. A chapel was erected, "and," says the historian, [3] "the Church has maintained a prosperous existence ever since, and many happy spirits have gone up from that town to join the triumphant host in heaven." The same authority, referring to Branch, adds: "The day of his burial found a few of his friends present who had been blessed through his instrumentality, and who desired in turn to give him a respectable Christian funeral and burial. But the little log Calvinistic church could not be procured for that purpose, nor were they permitted to inter his body in the newly inclosed cemetery, nor could they procure a respectable team or carriage with which to carry the corpse to the grave. At the hour appointed a prayer was offered, and the coffin placed on a wood-sled and drawn by a yoke of oxen about one mile and a quarter west from the present village of North East, and on the north side of the Erie and Buffalo road this sainted man was buried in a beautiful grove. To the honor of the people of that town be it said, they have long since so enlarged the cemetery as to bring within its inclosure the grave of the lamented Branch. The writer was permitted several years since to visit the place, and shed a few tears over the turf that covers his sacred dust."

An important western character appeared in this field in 1816. Young failed to reach the district after the General Conference of that year; James B. Finley came to supply his place, and continued to superintend it till 1819 with extraordinary zeal and success. Few men have attained more distinction as evangelical pioneers of the West; he was, in all respects, a genuine child of the wilderness, one of its best "typical" men; of stalwart frame, "features rather coarse," [4] but large benevolent eyes, "sandy hair, standing erect," a good, expressive mouth, a "voice like thunder," and a courage that made riotous opposers (whom he often encountered) quail before him. He did not hesitate to seize disturbers of his meetings, shake them in his athletic grasp, and pitch them out of the windows or doors. Withal his heart was most genial, his discourses full of pathos, and his friendships the most tender and lasting. All over the northwest he worked mightily, through a long life, to found and extend his Church, traveling circuits and districts, laboring as missionary to the Indians, and chaplain to prisoners, and in his old age making valuable historical contributions to its literature. [5]

Though born in North Carolina, (in 1781,) his childhood was spent in Kentucky, where he grew up with all the hardy habits of the pioneer settlers. In early manhood he and all his father's family were borne along by the current of emigration into the Northwestern Territory, where he lived to see his state (Ohio) become a dominant part of the American Union. He had been a rough, reckless, and entirely irreligious youth, associating with Indians, a "mighty hunter" among the "backwoodsmen," fond of nearly every excess, and of the most hazardous adventures with savage men and beasts. The camp-meetings of the Presbyterians and Methodists in Kentucky had spread, about the beginning of the century, a vivid religious interest all over the West. Finley's sensitive though rough nature could not escape it. He went with some of his associates to Cane Ridge, Ky., his former home, to witness one of these great occasion His own story gives us a striking view of them in the primitive, their rude western grandeur and excesses, "A scene presented itself," he says, "to my mind not only novel and unaccountable, but awful beyond description. A vast crowd, supposed by some to have amounted to twenty-five thousand, was collected together. The noise was like the roar of Niagara. The sea of human beings seemed to be agitated as if by storm. I counted seven ministers all preaching at the same time; some on stumps, others on wagons, and one, William Burke, standing on a tree which, in falling, had lodged against another. Some of the people were singing, others praying, some crying for mercy in the most piteous accents. While witnessing these scenes a peculiarly strange sensation, such as I had never felt before, came over me. My heart beat tremendously, my knees trembled, my lip quivered, and I felt as though I must fall to the ground. A strange supernatural power seemed to pervade the mass of mind there collected. I became so weak that I found it necessary to sit down. Soon after I left and went into the woods, and there strove to rally and man up my courage. After some time I returned to the scene of excitement, the waves of which had, if possible, risen still higher. The same awfulness of feeling came over me. I stepped up on a log, where I could have a better view of the surging sea of humanity. The scene that then presented itself to my eye was indescribable. At one time I saw at least five hundred swept down in a moment, as if a battery of a thousand guns had been opened upon them. My hair rose up on my head, my whole frame trembled, the blood ran cold in my veins, and I fled to the woods a second time, and wished that I had stayed at home." He went to a neighboring tavern, where, amid a throng of drinking and fighting backwoodsmen, he swallowed a dram of brandy, but afterward felt worse than before; "as near hell," he says, "as I could wish to be, in either this world or that to come." Drawn irresistibly back to the meeting, he gazed again, appalled, upon its scenes. That night he slept in a barn, a most wretched man. The next day he hastily left for his home with one of his companions. They were both too absorbed in their reflections to converse as they journeyed; but, says Finley, "When we arrived at the Blue Lick Knobs I broke the silence which reigned between us, and said, 'Captain, if you and I don't stop our wickedness the devil will get us both.'" Tears gushed freely from the eyes of both. The next night was spent without slumber at a place called May's Lick. "As soon as day broke," adds Finley, "I went to the woods to pray, and no sooner had my knees touched the ground than I cried aloud for mercy and salvation, and fell prostrate. My cries were so loud that they attracted the attention of the neighbors, many of whom gathered around me. Among the number was a German from Switzerland, who had experienced religion. He, under standing fully my condition, had me carried to his house and laid on a bed. The old Dutch saint directed me to look right away to the Saviour. He then kneeled by my bedside and prayed for me most fervently in Dutch and broken English. He rose and sang in the same manner, and continued singing and praying alternately till nine o'clock, when suddenly my load was gone, my guilt removed, and presently the direct witness from heaven shone fully upon my heart. Then there flowed such copious streams of love into the hitherto waste and desolate places of my soul, that I thought I should die with excess of joy. So strangely did I appear to all but the Dutch brother that they thought me deranged.. After a time I returned to my companion, and we started on our journey. O what a day it was to my soul!"

For seven years no Methodist itinerant reached his remote home in the Northwestern Territory, and he lost these powerful influences; but in 1808 he went, with his wife, some miles to a Methodist class-meeting, and soon after both joined the Church. In 1809 John Sale called him out to travel the Sciota Circuit. He was received, the same year, into the Conference, and continued to travel circuits till he was sent, in 1816, to supply the place of Young in Western Pennsylvania. From one end of his great field to the other his trumpet was now continually sounding, awakening the most hidden settlements. His privations and labors were excessive, but could not daunt him. "I suffered much," he writes, "with cold, which I had contracted by exposure to the chilling blasts of the northern lakes. Our meetings were all attended with the presence and power of God, and the preachers were all in the spirit of revivals. At North East we had a most glorious time both among saints and sinners. The snow was about two feet deep, and continued for a long time, affording great facilities for sleighing, which were improved. Vast numbers came to church, and many were converted. At this place I visited the grave of Thomas Branch ... My feelings were of a peculiarly solemn character as I stood by that lone grave of the stranger minister in a strange land." His example inspired his preachers to labor and suffer. "Great," he says, "were the toils and hardships they were called to endure. The winter was extremely severe, the cold being almost beyond endurance, yet the Lord crowned the labor and sufferings of his ministers with success. The country was but sparsely settled, the rides were long, and roads rough, the fare hard, and provisions scarce; but in the midst of all the Lord was with them. To preach once very day and lead class, (after having traveled from ten to twenty miles,) and two or three times on the Sabbath, leading as many classes, with the privilege of being at home three days out of thirty, would now be regarded as severe work."

William Swayze succeeded Finley on the district in 1819. He also was one of "the giants of those days." He was born in New Jersey in 1784. In his youth he was led, by a pious African, to hear a Methodist preacher near Baltimore, was awakened and converted, and soon after received into the Church by Philip Bruce. It was not long before he was preaching "with surprising ability." A horse and outfit were presented to him, and he started on a ministerial tour through Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont. In 1807 be was received by the New York Conference, and began a course of eight years' [6] most successful travels and labors, chiefly on New England circuits. "He became," says the western historian, "emphatically a 'son of thunder,' attracting great crowds of people to his ministry, and speaking with a power and pathos that few have ever equaled, moving and exciting many, some to tears, others to cry for mercy, while others would shout for joy." [7]

In 1815 he was transferred to the Ohio Conference, where his ministrations were attended with his former success, and where living witnesses of his usefulness still survive, especially on Columbus Circuit and in Chillicothe. In the latter place his word was eminently. In the demonstration of the Spirit and power. In 1820 he took charge of the Ohio District, and "his labors, for almost four years, were crowned with unexampled success. [8] By the division of the Conference in 1824, he was assigned to the Pittsburgh Conference, and appointed to the Erie District, where he was distinguished by "his usual prosperity." In 1828 he superintended the Canton District. In 1830 he was re-transferred to the Ohio Conference. After having borne the burden of twenty-seven years' labor and suffering in some of the most difficult portions of the ministerial field, the infirmities of age and illness at last disabled him. When no longer able to perform effective service, his brethren of the Pittsburgh Conference invited him, by formal request, to return to their body, share their provisions for worn-out preachers, and die among them. In honoring him with this, act of generous consideration the Conference still more eminently honored itself. He was placed upon its superannuated list, where he remained till he departed to his final rest, at Edinburgh, Ohio, in 1841, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and in great peace and resignation. His fellow-laborers pronounce him, "a martyr to his work." "He was," says our western authority, who knew him well, "a very remarkable man, differing greatly from Finley, Young, and Gruber, but in moving, melting eloquence not inferior to either of them. He was tall, straight, and slim in person, with great power of endurance. His complexion was dark, his eyes black, deeply set, and very expressive. His voice possessed great compass, and was perfectly at his control. At times it would be soft and mellow, then it would become like peals of thunder, or the roar of a lion. Himself full of feeling and interest, and possessing a wonderful command of the feelings of others, he would at times sway the multitude of astonished listeners like trees by a hurricane, carrying his congregation up with him, until they would rise them their seats and rush toward the speaker, some weeping, others shouting, and others falling like dead men. He could never contentedly close a quarterly meeting or a camp-meeting without having a big break in the ranks of the wicked. We will venture the opinion that more souls, along the southern shore of Lake Erie, have gone up to shine like stars in the heavenly sky through the instrumentality of William Swayze than by that of any other man dead or living." [9]

He had many able young preachers under his authority on this district; among them was Charles Elliott, whose important services belong to dates beyond our present chronological limits, a man of extraordinary learning, of tireless labor through a protracted life, and of most genial character. He was born in Ireland, in 1792, where he was early brought into the Church by Wesley's itinerants. Believing himself divinely called to preach, he studied assiduously, and prepared himself for college, but was refused admission to Dublin University because he could not subscribe its theological tests. He came to the United States a local preacher in 1814, and plunged immediately into the woods of Ohio. In 1819 the Ohio Conference received him on probation, and sent him, with Thomas A. Morris, (afterward bishop,) to Zanesville Circuit, under the presiding eldership of Jacob Young. The next year he appears in our present field on the Erie Circuit.[10] For years he was a principal founder of the Church as circuit preacher and presiding elder in these regions, and one year he spent as missionary among the Upper Sandusky Indians. But his superior education fitted him for more exigent services. From 1827 to 1831 he was Professor of Languages in Madison College, which pertained to the Pittsburgh Conference. After presiding two years more on Uniontown District, he was appointed editor of the Pittsburgh Conference Journal; in 1836 editor of the Western Christian Advocate, at Cincinnati; in 1848 presiding elder of Cincinnati District; in 1852 again editor of the Western Christian Advocate; in 1850 president of Iowa Wesleyan University; in 1860 editor of the Central Christian Advocate, at St. Louis, where he courageously maintained the loyal party during the war of the rebellion, while surrounded with and menaced by treason. He subsequently served the Iowa Wesleyan University till the infirmities of age required him to retire in 1866.

Besides his fragmentary writings, (almost innumerable editorials and other contributions to the periodical literature of the Church,) he has written "Delineations of Roman Catholicism," a standard work, republished in England; "Sinfulness of American Slavery," an exhaustive investigation of the subject; and the "History of the Great Secession" of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, from the parent body in 1844, a large volume, in which the history of that momentous proceeding and of the antecedent ecclesiastical controversy on slavery is thoroughly given.

Alfred Brunson was one of his successful co-laborers in the Erie country. He was born in Connecticut in 1793, and converted in 1809 at Carlisle, Penn., whither he had gone " a runaway apprentice " from New England, a wayward youth, like so many others whom the powerful ministrations of Methodism arrested and converted into useful men. He was brought into the Church under the labors of Jacob Gruber, returned to Connecticut, purchased the time of his apprenticeship, joined Jesse Lee's first eastern class, and was licensed to exhort in 1810. In 1812 he moved to Ohio, spent a year in the army under General Harrison, was licensed to preach in 1815 by Jacob Young, and called out to travel, by Finley, in 1818, when he formed the Huron Circuit, Ohio. In 1819 he was sent to the Erie Circuit by Swayze, and was signally successful, reporting an increase of three hundred members. In 1820 he was received into the Ohio Conference, and appointed to Mahoning Circuit. During these early years he laboriously extended the denomination, forming many new societies. He was subsequently located for some time, but resumed the itinerary, and after serving the Church thirteen years "with distinguished ability on circuits and stations" in remoter parts of the West, reappeared on the scene of his first travels as presiding elder. In 1835 he was transferred to the Illinois Conference, and, placing his family at Prairie du Chien, "spent several years as a missionary among the Indians on the Upper Mississippi; then was presiding elder a while, then state legislator, then returned to the regular work of the ministry." [11] He was chaplain in the army in 1862, and retired to the superannuated ranks in 1864, "a veteran of long and useful services."

By 1820 Methodism was thoroughly established in all this country, with districts and circuits belonging, some to the Genesee, some to the Baltimore, others to the Virginia, and still others to the Ohio Conferences; more than half a hundred itinerants were sounding the gospel among the mountains and valleys from Lake Erie to far into Western Virginia, and thousands or zealous members were rallying into classes and incipient Churches. They were laying the foundations of the Erie, Pittsburgh, and Western Virginia Conferences.

Passing further westward, into the "great Northwestern Territory," we again meet Quinn, whom we have so often followed over the ground just surveyed, but who had now been borne away by the surges of emigration. In 1804 we find him traveling the Hockhocking Circuit, Ohio, an immense field, comprising not only all the settlements of that river, but those of the Muskingum, and of the Sciota from the high bank below Chillicothe as far up as the site of Columbus, and those also of many other streams. He was still a pioneer and founder, forming societies in almost all the sparse communities. His family was placed in a cabin, exposed to Indians, and, in his occasional visits home, he had to carry flour to them more than forty miles. He went through the country scattering the "good seed" of the gospel broadcast. Occasionally one of the bishops reached and cheered him. Whatcoat found his way thither. "I shall never forget," says the itinerant, "the sweet and heavenly smile with which he met me. While holding my hand he said, 'I first found thy footsteps on the Lake Shore in 1801; next I found thee in Winchester, Va., in 1802; then met thee at the altar, in Light Street, Baltimore, in 1803; and now I find thee here! Well, we must endure hardships as good soldiers of the cross. The toils and privations of itinerancy are great; but Christ has said, Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world."'

Thence Quinn passed to Sciota Circuit, where he had about thirty appointments, the nearest being fifty miles from his family. Emigrants from Kentucky were now pouring into this region, and among them were many zealous Methodists. At one of his meetings "a very dignified and elderly looking" woman, a stranger, remained to attend the class, in which she said, "with a full soul, and with eyes swimming in tears, 'I am, through the infinite mercy of God, a child of his, and, by blessed experience, know I enjoy the pardoning love of the Saviour. I am a widow, recently from Kentucky. I have a large family of children. I have traveled nine or ten miles to enjoy this means of grace, and to invite you to preach in my cabin for the benefit of my children and my unconverted neighbors.' Her words were with power, and it was manifest that the love of Christ constrained her, that she was filled with the Holy Ghost. While she spoke, the same flame was kindled in the hearts of others, and some shouted aloud for joy. After the class Quinn learned that the stranger was Jane Trimble, mother to Governor Trimble, and grandmother to Joseph M. Trimble. On his next round he preached at her double cabin, on Clear Creek, three miles north of Hillsboro. At this meeting, it is probable, no professor of religion was present except the pious widow and the preacher. After the sermon, as there was no class to meet, he stated that it was the last round on the circuit, and, as he had soon to leave for Conference, he could not preach to them any more, but that his successors would. He then sang one of the songs of Zion. At that period his voice warmest melodious and sweet. The tones of the music, accompanied with a holy unction, melted every heart. While singing, he passed through the room, and shook hands with every one present. All were more or less affected. Young Mrs. Trimble, first wife of Allen Trimble, and mother of Joseph M., though once a professor of religion, became conscious of her backsliding and lukewarmness, and the absolute necessity of the reclaiming grace of God. Her anguish of spirit was so great she could conceal it no longer. She first went out of the room; but, finding there no means of relief to her distressed soul, she soon returned, and kneeled down at a seat. Many hearts perhaps sympathized with her; but there were but two to pray for her. They were, however, efficient suppliants, and, having power with God, they soon prevailed. In a short time the earnest seeker was powerfully reclaimed; and such was the clear testimony of the Spirit, assuring her that her soul was restored to the favor of God, that she praised the Lord with but little intermission till midnight. In a few years she passed away in holy triumph, and now. Awaits the arrival of her friends in heaven." [12]

The venerable Jane Trimble became a "mother in Israel" to the Methodists of the Northwestern Territory. Her family, that of her son Governor Trimble, and of her grandson, Joseph M. Trimble, (one of the missionary secretaries of the Church,) have been identified with nearly the entire history of the denomination in Ohio. She was an extraordinary woman. Born in Virginia in 1755, on the very borders of civilization, she was familiar, from childhood, with the warwhoop of the savage. [13] Several of her family perished in the Revolutionary and Indian wars. In 1784 she emigrated tO Kentucky, whither her husband had gone to lay out a farm and build a log-cabin. "She traveled," says her biographer, "on horseback, carrying her eldest child behind her, and her little boy, Allen, eleven months old, in her lap. On reaching Clinch River the stream was found swollen by recent rains, and the swift current dashed over huge rocks. She was leading the company of females, and, trusting in God, and committing all her interests to him, she urged her steed into the rapid stream, and reached the opposite shore in safety, amid the prayers and shouts of those who watched her progress. The remainder of the company crossed by a ford further up the river." General Knox, who convoyed the train, and witnessed the feat, and her noble conduct throughout the journey, applauded her as equaling in courage and presence of mind the women of Sparta.

For fifteen years she lived, surrounded by Indian perils, about ten miles from a "station," near the site of Lexington, educating her children and servants with the ability and dignity of a true Christian matron. She possessed a remarkably vigorous mind, was familiar, there in the backwoods, with the great English poets, and had the four gospels entirely in her memory, acquired when she was but fifteen years old. Some of the writings of Fletcher fell into her hands, and she became a Methodist in 1790. Her husband determined to push on farther with the movement of emigration, and purchased lands in Ohio, but died before the family started for their new home. The noble widow led her eight children thither; and there, in Highland County; welcomed Quinn, and formed one of the first Sunday-schools in the state. Every interest of the Church, especially its missions to the aborigines, had her hearty co-operation through the remainder of her long life. She saw all the Northwestern Territory overspread by her denomination, her great state organized, the infant son, whom she had carried on her steed to the West, its chief magistrate and died under his roof in 1839, aged more than eighty-four years, having been a devoted Methodist nearly fifty years. She was not only one of the best, but one of the ablest women who have adorned her Church or country, a befitting associate of Mary Tiffin, Mrs. General Russell, and similar "elect ladies" of the Church in the wilderness.

Throughout the remainder of the present period Quinn continued to labor in Ohio with great success on Muskingum District in 1808, Scioto District in 1812, Fairfield Circuit in 1816, Pickaway Circuit 1817, at Cincinnati in 1818, and at Chillicothe in 1820. Later in life, in reviewing his work, he wrote: "In each of these fields it may be safely asserted that, during the last forty years, thousands of redeemed sinners have been called, justified, sanctified, and taken home to heaven, while thousands more, to the third or fourth generation; are still on the way. Bless the Lord, O my soul, for what my eyes have seen! If the men that labored and suffered here were unlearned in the classics, and, therefore, in the judgment of some, incompetent ministers, yet hath the great Head of the Church, through their instrumentality, given to his people and the world many competent ministers, who have been, and still are, both burning and shining lights. If Chenango Circuit, formed in 1800 by Peter B. Davis, gave the Methodist Episcopal Church her senior bishop, (Roberts,) Guyandotte, formed in 1803 by William Steel, and traveled in 1804 by Asa Shinn, furnished her with her junior bishop, (Morris;) and if Kanawha, Muskingum, Hockhocking, etc. have not sent out bishops, they have sent out scores of deacons and elders, and with them a goodly number of scholars and professional men; but the preacher-making prerogative still belongs to Christ. O, Methodists, never forget this! I may have attended and superintended one hundred and thirty or forty camp-meetings, and witnessed most powerful displays of God's amazing grace, in the conviction and happy conversion of some thousands of souls. At first we used to erect two stands, with seats at each, one in the encampment, and the other some twenty or thirty rods distant, and no altar at either. At these we had preaching alternately through the day, but only the one in the encampment was illuminated and occupied at night. Each public service was followed by a prayer-meeting, which was not to be broken off to make way for preaching; but the trumpet was sounded at the other stand, whither all who wished to hear preaching were wont to repair. Here also a prayer-meeting ensued, and so alternately through the day. There were no altars, no 'mourners' benches,' or 'anxious seats' in those days, nor were any invitations given to seekers of salvation to present themselves for the prayers of the Church; but soon after the commencement of the prayer-meeting, praying and singing groups and circles were seen and heard throughout the encampment, even to the outskirts of the congregation; and there was no great difficulty in keeping pretty good order, for an awful sense of the majesty and glory of God often appeared to pervade the whole assembly. As an evidence of the great good resulting from camp-meetings, it is a fact that a large proportion of the members, and many eminently useful ministers, in the western country, have been brought to a knowledge of salvation at these meetings." Burke, Shinn, Oglesby, Sale, Lakin, Parker; William Young, Lotspeich, Lasley, Manley, Cummings, and many other energetic men, soon to be noticed, were co-laborers of Quinn in these regions, throughout these years.

From Ohio the systematic work of the Church extended westward over Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.

Indiana territory was constituted in 1800; in 1805 it was divided by the organization of Michigan territory, and in 1809 that of Illinois was detached from it.

In 1802 the first Indiana Methodist society was formed, at Gassoway, in "Clark's Grant," Nathan Robertson being the first Methodist of the territory. Two years later there was an Illinois mission. Whitewater Circuit was formed in 1807, with Thomas Hellams for its preacher, and sixty-seven members; Silver Creek in 1808, and Vincennes in 1810. In 1815 there were, in the entire territory, Whitewater, Silver Creek, Illinois, Little Wabash, Vincennes, and Lawrenceburgh Circuits, having one thousand seven hundred members and seven preachers. The latter were John Strange, W. M. Hunt, Shadrack Ruark, John Scripps, John Shrader, James Noland, and W. C. Harbesson.

By the end of our present period there were in the same territory twenty-six preachers and eight thousand members. By the end of the first quarter of the century they had so increased that there were in Michigan four, in Illinois eighteen, and in Indiana twenty-eight itinerants, making forty preachers and fourteen thousand members. Seven years later the increase was, in Michigan, eight preachers and one thousand six hundred members; in Illinois, forty-four preachers, ten thousand members; and in Indiana, sixty preachers and twenty thousand members. In 1832 was formed the Indiana Conference. For twelve years the entire state was in one Conference, which was first divided in 1844, when it reported sixty-six thousand members, two hundred traveling preachers, and four hundred and eighty-eight local preachers. In our day (1866) there are in the state four Conferences, four hundred traveling preachers, seven hundred local preachers, and ninety thousand members. "This state, though it bears a name signifying 'domain of the Indian,' which, when given, was literally true, has for its more than one million three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three places of worship, one thousand two hundred and fifty-six of which are furnished by the Methodists, with accommodations for more than one million, and valued at nearly four million five hundred thousand dollars. The state has six thousand five hundred free schools, one thousand one hundred and twenty-three Sabbath-schools, more than one hundred higher schools or academies and colleges, of which the Methodists furnish one third." [14]

The extension of Methodism northwestward, into the Michigan territory, was slow. The fruits of the labors of Bangs, Case, and Mitchell, lingered in Detroit till Joseph Hickox was appointed to the circuit in 1815; the recent war had demoralized the whole country, and Hickox could discover only seven Methodists in Detroit. A society, which had been organized at Monroe in 1811, he found entirely broken up, and he was the only Protestant preacher in the territory for at least one year. There was not yet a single Protestant chapel in it. But, after the war, emigration, and, with it, Methodism, began to pour into the country. "As the population extended, our ministers," says a local authority, "followed them, wading through the swamps and marshes, and striking the Indian trails, so that the people have never been left for any considerable time without the gospel. The first preachers were sent from the New York Conference, the next from the Genesee, the third from the Ohio. In 1836 the Michigan Conference was created — it included a part of Ohio; but in 1840 the Ohio portion was separated, leaving Michigan alone. At this time there were only seventy-eight ministers and preachers, and eleven thousand five hundred and twenty-three members. Though this seems small, we must consider that the population was sparse. Now we have about three hundred ministers, and thirty-two thousand members. The first Protestant church erected in Michigan was built near Detroit in 1818. It was made of logs, and was considered a fine affair; but now we find substantial churches dotting all the country. These are but indications of the thrift and spiritual prosperity of our people. This great advance in numerical and financial strength has not been secured without toil and sacrifice on the part of those who have led on the sacramental host. Nathan Bangs traveled from the city of New York to Detroit on horseback; William Case crossed the Detroit River sometimes on floating ice, jumping from cake to cake; Joseph Hickox braved dangers from hostile Indians and rude British soldiers; others have slept in the woods, and carried an ax to blaze their way through the forest. But all have been borne up by the divine presence." [15]

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ENDNOTES

1 Gregg's Hist of Meth. In Erie Conf., p.63.

2 Gregg, p. 119.

3 Gregg, p. 110.

4 Gregg, p.143.

5 In my own collections are, from his pen, "Autobiography," Cincinnati, 1854; "Sketches of Western Methodism," Cincinnati, 1857; "Life among the Indians," Cincinnati, 1857; "Memorials of Prison Life," Cincinnati, 1860.

6 Not ten, as stated in the Minutes of 1842.

7 Gregg, p.177.

8 Minutes, 1842.

9 Gregg, p. 178.

10 Gregg, p.182.

11 Gregg, p 349.

12 Wright's Life of Quinn, p. 95.

13 Disoaway's "Excellent Women," p. 183. New York, 1861.

14 Rev. Dr. Aaron Wood's Centenary Sermon. Chicago 1866.

15 Rev. E. H Pilcher, in Northwestern Christian Adv. Sept. 5, 1866.

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