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

in the eyes of the people, and great success in building up his Church. Revivals have spread through
all the country, and multitudes have been added to the little and despised flock; nay, many who were
once the greatest enemies of Methodism, and especially of Methodist preachers, have been
converted, and are now become their greatest and truest friends. [7]
Pickering labored mostly about Boston, and on the Boston District as presiding elder, his field in
the latter appointment extending from the end of Cape Cod to Providence, R. I., from Marblehead
to the interior of New Hampshire; Kibby, Snelling, Webb, Munger, Merwin, Kent, Hyde, Merrill,
Sabin, Brodhead, Lindsey, and many more such men, being under his command. Ruter, returning
from his Canadian labors, traveled in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine, but mostly in New
Hampshire, where he followed Hedding in 1809, on a district so large that it bore the name of the
state. His self-culture was a remarkable example of the "acquisition of knowledge under difficulties,"
for, with all the hardships of the itinerancy, he had now become a scholarly man. His influence was
important in promoting studious habits among the preachers, and, toward the end of the period, he
helped to found the first Methodist academy of New England, at Newmarket., N. H., and became its
first principal. The General Conference of 1820, by appointing him to the Book Concern, New York,
closed his New England career; thereafter he was to tend westward, continually growing in eminence
as a preacher, educator, writer, to be crowned at last by death as a pioneer missionary in the farthest
southwest.
New Hampshire's single district, with its five circuits, nine preachers, and one thousand members
of 1804, was to double all its numerical force before the close of these years. The period began in
Vermont with some five circuits, seven preachers, and a few scattered members, under the presiding
eldership of Joseph Crawford, whose district extended into Massachusetts, on the one hand, and
[8]
Canada on the other. It closed there with fully doubled strength. The two districts which
comprehended the earlier occupied fields -- Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut -- at its
beginning, much more than doubled all their statistics by its close.
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