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

At the organization of the Genesee Conference in 1810 the Upper Canada District was placed
under its jurisdiction, while that of Lower Canada was retained by New York Conference; there were
not yet, however, two hundred members in all the five appointments of the latter. Joseph Sawyer
now located; Case went to preside over the Cayuga District, in New York; but reinforcements
arrived. There were seventeen circuits and twenty-one preachers. Luckey was among them the next
year, and found, on his remote Ottawa Circuit, a hundred and sixteen members. The whole country
now became alarmed by the omens of the approaching war, and, in the next year, none of the
preachers went to the Conferences in the states. That of New York gave up all the lower province
to that of Genesee, except the Dunham Circuit. New England Conference retained Stanstead Circuit,
where Charles Virgin, David Kilbourn, and other eastern itinerants had been laboring for some years,
crossing the line of their Vermont territory. No returns of members reached the Genesee Conference
from the upper province, but, in the lower, Montreal reported more than fifty, Quebec about half that
number, Ottawa Circuit about a hundred, and that of St. Francis River one hundred and twenty.
Bangs was appointed to Montreal, but did not reach it on account of the military obstructions
between the two countries. Thomas Burch was sent to Quebec, and made his way thither; Luckey,
appointed to St. Francis, failed to get there. Robert Hibbard, a native of New York, who had joined
its Conference in 1809, and for two years had labored faithfully in Canada, where he had formed the
St. Francis Circuit, gathering upon it more than a hundred members, consented to return
notwithstanding the troubled times. He reached the Ottawa Circuit, and kept to his work, though the
provincial government had, by proclamation, ordered all citizens of the United States to leave the
country. Learning that the preachers for the St. Francis Circuit, so dear to him, as his own work, had
not arrived, he resolved to go thither and encourage the Churches under their new trials. He reached
Montreal, but in his further progress was drowned in the St. Lawrence; his horse escaped to the
shore, but the evangelical hero was borne away, and was seen "going down with his hands lifted
toward heaven." His body was never found. He was a sanctified man, "studious," and "indefatigable,"
and, say his brethren in their Minutes, "entered the watery grave to rise again to a glorious
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immortality at the last day." Asbury delivered a "funeral sermon" on the event before the next New
York Conference.
In 1813 the war had cut off all communication between the Churches of the two countries. The
preachers could not attend the Genesee Conference, but they met together and made their own
appointments as best they could. The circuits of the upper district were at least nominally manned,
but in the lower, Quebec, Montreal, St. Francis, and Ottawa, were without preachers. Several
itinerants in the upper province located; all, indeed, except Ryan, Rhodes, Whitehead, and Prindle.
Those who located, however, continued to serve the Church in their respective localities, and some
of the located veterans, Sawyer in Matilda, Keeler in Elizabethtown, and Dunham in
Fredericksburgh, worked zealously in these and neighboring places. Methodism was thus sustained
during the crisis. The Church in Quebec had no regular pastor for two years of the struggle; but a
Methodist sergeant in a British regiment preached for them with much success. When his regiment
was removed, a local preacher was raised up, who supplied them till the English Conference sent
over pastors for Montreal and Quebec.
At the close of the contest in 1815 the Genesee Conference resumed its care of the country. Case
was appointed presiding elder of Upper Canada District, Ryan of that of Lower Canada. There were
now but nine circuits and twelve preachers. Montreal and Quebec were unsupplied; but the British