History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

HISTORY OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
By Abel Stevens
CHAPTER IV
METHODISM IN THE MIDDLE AND NORTHERN STATES, 1804 -- 1820
Condition of the Church -- Camp-meetings -- John Emory -- He forsakes the Bar for the Pulpit
-- Emory's further Career and Character -- Jacob Gruber tried for opposing Slavery -- Garrettson and
Ware -- Marvin Richardson -- A Camp-meeting -- Nathan Bangs -- Heman Bangs -- Robert Seney
-- Samuel Luckey -- Origin of the African Methodist Episcopal Church -- Richard Allen becomes
a Bishop -- Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church -- Methodism up the Hudson -- In Troy --
Noah Levings "Exhorting" -- Albany -- Schenectady -- Ministerial Reinforcements
The maturer fields of the Church, in the middle and northern states, had almost continual
prosperity during the present period. It was a time of church building, in which the primitive
temporary structures began to give place to more commodious but hardly more pretentious edifices;
of local growth, in membership and influence, and of rapid and important accessions to the ministry.
But these sections had not much frontier work, except in Western New York and Canada, and,
therefore, fewer of those salient events, which still marked the progress of the denomination in the
South and West, and to some extent in the yet reluctant states of New England Their published
records continue to be singularly scanty in historical data. Men now entered the itinerancy, whose
names are familiar through the whole Church, but who are known only by vague traditions of their
pulpit eloquence and great usefulness, and the meager allusions or brief obituaries of the Conference
Minutes. [1]
Beginning the period with forty thousand four hundred and fifteen members, the two Conferences
of this region ended it with three Conferences and eighty-two thousand two hundred and fifty-four
members. They had more than doubled their numerical strength. In 1810 they detached a large and
thriving portion of their territory, and formed of it the Genesee Conference, under which has grown
up the flourishing Methodism of interior and western New York. Steady progress was made in the
principal cities. Philadelphia nearly doubled its communicants, notwithstanding it lost some thirteen
hundred by the secession of its colored members under Richard Allen. New York more than trebled
its members, though it also lost nearly a thousand by a similar African schism in 1819, and three
hundred more the next year by a secession of whites under William M. Stillwell, the founder of the
"Stillwellites," a faction which has utterly dwindled away. Great revivals had prevailed there,
especially in 1808 and 1809, adding nearly six hundred members in the two years, so that in 1810
two new churches were erected, those of Allen and Bedford streets, both of which became
fountain-heads of Methodism for the whole city. John Street was also rebuilt before the period
closed, (in 1817, and rededicated January 4, 1818;) its old timbers were used in the construction of
another church, at the "Two Mile Stone," from which sprung Seventh Street Church. The other chief
cities were still mostly heads of circuits, and have not distinct enough returns in the Minutes for the
estimation of their progress, but their circuits show generally large gains. It was a time of almost
universal revivals, and especially of successful camp-meetings; checked somewhat by the war with
Great Britain, but only temporarily, for the energy of Methodism had now become irrepressible.