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

HISTORY OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
By Abel Stevens
CHAPTER V
METHODISM IN THE MIDDLE AND NORTHERN STATES, 1804-1820:
CONCLUDED
Methodism in the Interior of Pennsylvania and New York -- Old Canaan Circuit -- Peter Vannest
crosses the Genesee River -- First Class and first Camp-meeting beyond it -- George Lane -- Glezen
Fillmore "Exhorting" -- Thomas Smith's Northern Adventures -- A Scene in Lyons, N. Y. --
Organization of Genesee Conference -- Methodism in Canada -- William Case, the Apostle to the
Indians -- Progress in Canada -- The War -- Robert Hibbard perishes in the St. Lawrence --
Declension of the provincial Church by the War -- Its renewed Prosperity -- Genesee Conference
meets in Canada -- Great Revival -- Continued Success -- Canadian Methodism in 1820 --
Methodism of the Middle and North in 1820 -- Obituary of Preachers -- Asbury
Meanwhile the frontier movement of Methodism in the middle and northern states, which we have
heretofore traced, was energetically advancing. The Susquehanna District, pertaining to the
Baltimore Conference, with Owen, Griffith, Paynter, Christopher Frye, Draper, and a succession of
similar men, as preachers, prospered greatly. In 1807 Draper was sent to form the Canaan Circuit, [1]
of ancient renown, and the Church advanced rapidly among the Cumberland, Tioga, and Wyoming
mountains and valleys. The local historian, referring to Canaan Circuit as an example of the hard
field, says that its itinerant preachers "each received $49.98 and their traveling expenses. Let the
present race of preachers survey the territory, think of the roads as they then were, and of the
accommodations, and look at the scanty pittance which the preachers received, and ask themselves
if the contrast presents no occasion for gratitude and contentment. Here is embraced the whole of
the present Honesdale District, consisting of seventeen charges, besides portions of Wyoming,
Wyalusing, and Binghamton Districts, and a portion of New York and New Jersey Conferences. This
is the extent of Canaan Circuit in 1810. The roads cannot be conceived of now. We know what they
were ten years later, and then mud, rocks, stumps and roots, pole bridges, and no bridges! To travel
these roads in hunger, cold, nakedness, and weariness, and often to lodge in open cabins, among dirt
and insects, and receive almost fifty dollars in the course of the year! This was the itinerancy in 1810
in the Genesee Conference."
In the more northerly interior the denomination extended among the New York lakes, planting
itself in most of the small settlements which have since risen into flourishing towns and cities. It
passed over the Genesee River, as we have seen, in 1804, represented by a useful layman, David
Hamlin, who for three years gathered the settlers his own house for religious worship. Peter Vannest,
who had been tending in this direction for years as an itinerant, forded the Genesee river in 1807,
near the present city of Rochester, and delivered his first sermon in what is now Ogden Center. The
first class was organized the same year in Newstead, at the house of Charles Knight. The next year
a youth, George Lane, afterward well known throughout the Church, as a faithful itinerant, as Book
Agent at New York, and as a saintly man, crossed the Genesee, and held the first camp-meeting of
that region. He traveled Vannest's new circuit, laboring unceasingly, and spread out the cause in all