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

HISTORY OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
By Abel Stevens
CHAPTER VI
METHODISM IN THE EASTERN STATES, 1804-1820
Review -- Lee -- Aaron Sandford -- Ministerial Recruits -- Wilbur Fisk -- Importance of his
Services -- His Character -- Edward T. Taylor, Mariners' Preacher, Boston -- His Romantic History
-- Joshua Soule - Elijah Hedding -- His Review of his Itinerant Life -- George Pickering -- Martin
Ruter -- Progress of the Church
By the superior supply of the published data of Methodism in the eastern states I have been able,
thus far, to give a more thorough and consecutive record of that part of the denomination than of any
other; and as most of its representative men, for the ensuing quarter of the century, have been
anticipated, we can pass rapidly over the remaining outlines of our narrative. We have seen Lee
preaching his first sermon in New England, at Norwalk, Conn., on the 17th of June, 1789; organizing
his first class, or society, of three women, September 25, at Stratfield; receiving his first male
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member, the first New England Methodist layman, Aaron Sanford, at Reading, December 28;
welcoming his first ministerial reinforcement, Jacob Brush, George Roberts, and Daniel Smith,
February 27, 1790; delivering his first sermon, in Boston, on its Common, in July; forming the first
class of Massachusetts, at Lynn, February 20, 1791, and dedicating its first church there June 26,
where also the first New England Conference was held August 3, 1792. We have followed him,
through all the New England states, even to the remotest points of the province of Maine, and taken
leave of him, at the conclusion of his great mission, in 1800, when, after eleven years of hardest
labor, his cause was permanently established in every eastern state, with nearly six thousand
members, and nearly fifty traveling preachers. At the end of four years more, when we last surveyed
the hard-fought field, we found in it more than ten thousand Methodists, with about fifty circuits,
and more than eighty itinerants.
The present period (1804-1820) opens with a host of able men in the eastern itinerancy, most of
whose names are already familiar to us: Moriarty, Crowell, Crawford, Beale, Brodhead, Ruter,
Hedding, Soule, Ostrander, Washburn, Pickering, Kibby, Jane, Snelling, Webb, Joshua Taylor,
Munger, Heath, Hillman, Merwin, Chichester, Sabin, Kent, and many others. Recruits, not a few of
whom have survived till our day, were to be rapidly added to the ranks: in 1804 Lewis Bates; in 1806
Joel Steele, Caleb Fogg, Solomon Silas; 1807 Charles Virgin, Joseph A. Merrill; 1808 Isaac Bonney,
William Swaze, David Kilbourn; 1809 John Lindsey, George Gary, Benjamin R. Hoyt., Coles
Carpenter, Amasa Taylor, Ebenezer F. Newell, Edward Hyde; 1811 Thomas Norris, Daniel Fillmore;
1812 Jacob Sanborn, John Adams, Thomas Tucker, Joseph Ierson; 1813 Van Rensselaer Osborn;
1814 Thomas C. Pierce, Bartholomew Otheman; 1815 John Lord, Nathan Payne; 1816 Daniel
Dorchester, Moses Fifield; and, toward the close of the period, increasing numbers of familiar
names, Jennison, Wiley, Hascall, Fisk, Taylor, Stoddard, Horton, Crandall, Baker -- a bald list of
names, but if of little interest to the general reader, yet all of them mementoes of precious memories
to New England Methodists. Many others of the same dates, and of hardly less importance, could
be added; but, like most of these, their historical significance belongs to a period beyond our present