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

HISTORY OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
By Abel Stevens
CHAPTER IX
METHODISM IN THE WEST, CONTINUED: 1804 -- 1820
Progress in Illinois -- Jesse Walker -- His Pioneer Adventures -- McKendree and Walker in the
Wilderness -- Walker's Camp-meeting -- His Success -- He enters Missouri -- Oglesby and Travis
there -- Missouri Conference Organized -- Walker's Sufferings -- He Introduces Methodism into St.
Louis -- His Determined Struggles there -- He goes to the Indian Tribes -- Labors at Chicago -- His
Death and Character -- Samuel Parker, "the Cicero of the West" -- James Axley's extraordinary
Character and Labors -- He Attacks Slavery and Whisky -- Peter Cartwright's Early Life --
Remarkable Scene at a Quarterly Meeting -- His extensive Services -- David Young -- John Collins
-- Judge McLean's Conversion and Character
We have seen the extension of the itinerant ministry to the Illinois territory, by Benjamin Young,
in 1804, and his extreme sufferings there. He had been preceded, however, by less known laborers.
The "real pioneer of the Church," says our best living Illinois authority, "was Capt. Joseph Ogle, who
went thither in 1785. The first Methodist preacher was Joseph Lillard, who, in 1703, formed a class
in St. Clair County, and appointed Captain Ogle leader. The next Methodist preacher was John
Clarke, who originally traveled in South Carolina from 1791 to 1796, when he withdrew on account
of slavery. He was the first man that preached the gospel west of the Mississippi, in 1798. Hosea
Riggs was the first Methodist preacher that settled in Illinois, and he revived and reorganized the
class at Captain Ogle's, formed by Lillard, which had dropped its regular meetings. From 1798 there
seems to have been no regular preacher in Illinois till 1804; then Benjamin Young was sent as a
missionary. In the fall of 1805 he re turned sixty-seven members, and Joseph Oglesby was appointed
to succeed him on the Illinois Circuit." [1]
A notable character appeared on the scene in 1806, a man whose name is identified for years with
[2]
the westward progress of Methodism. Jesse Walker was a native of North Carolina, but early
emigrated to Tennessee. He became a member of the Western Conference in 1802, and traveled
circuits in Tennessee and Kentucky for about four years, before his indomitable spirit led him forth
to pioneer the Church through Illinois and Missouri. His ministry in these first years was preparatory
for the great work of his ensuing life; few men in Kentucky or Tennessee equaled him in labor or
hardships. One of his contemporaries says: "He was a character perfectly unique; he had no
duplicate. He was to the Church what Daniel Boone was to the early settler, always first, always
ahead of everybody else, preceding all others long enough to be the pilot of the new-comer. He is
found first in Davidson County, Tenn. He lived within about three miles of the then village of
Nashville, and was at that time a man of family, poor, and, to a considerable extent, without
education. He was admitted on trial in 1802, and appointed to the Red River Circuit. But the
Minutes, in his case, are no guide, from the fact that he was sent by the bishops and presiding elders
in every direction where new work was to be cut out. His natural vigor was almost superhuman. He
did not seem to require food and rest as other men; no day's journey was long enough to tire him; no
fare too poor for him to live on; to him, in traveling, roads and paths were useless things -- he