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

country. These were about to return; but with Young were Richard Browning, John Travis, Zedekiah
McMinn, James Axley, (a host in himself;) and Anthony Houston. In two days the new itinerants had
dispersed to their hard work.
About two years Young continued to travel this great district, through scenes of wild life the most
incredible, often swimming rivers, losing himself in woods and swamps, making his way by Indian
trails, lodging in filthy cabins, and encountering at many of his appointments the most godless,
reckless, hardy, and degraded population of the whole American frontier; many of them men of high
crimes, who had escaped thither from the retributions of justice in older settlements. Lorenzo Dow,
in his eccentric wanderings, reached these regions, and for some time co-operated strenuously with
the pioneers. Though a New England man, Young found him as competent as any of his itinerants
for frontier service, and bore him along over his immense district, both of them preaching night and
day to rude, half-civilized throngs in the forests. Axley's field was the Catahoolah and Washita [8]
Circuits, where he labored mightily, and was in great favor with many of the rudest settlers, though
fiercely persecuted by others. He was "out of money," says Young, "and his clothing very ragged;
we made him up some money to buy him some clothes, and sent it to him, but he paid the money out
for flooring-boards. He then went into the forest, and cut down pine-trees, and hewed them with his
own hands; next, borrowed a yoke of oxen, and hauled them together; finally, he called the neighbors
to raise the house, which he covered with shingles made with his own hands. He built his pulpit, cut
out his doors and windows, bought him boards, and made seats. He then gave notice that the
meeting-house was ready, and if the people would come together he would preach to them. They all
flocked out to hear him. He preached several times, then read the General Rules, and told them if
they would conform to those rules he would take them into the Methodist Church. But he warned
them faithfully, if they did not intend to conform, not to join. The first day he opened the church door
eighteen joined. Axley informed me almost every week how he was succeeding. A friend wrote me
a letter informing me that the chapel was finished, and he had named it Axley Chapel; that Axley
had conducted himself with so much propriety, that neither man nor devils could find any fault with
him." Axley thus built with his own hands the first Methodist Church in Louisiana.
After toiling there one many months "our beloved Brother Axley returned," says Young, "from
Louisiana to the Mississippi territory. He met us at William Foster's. When he went to Louisiana he
was a large, fine-looking man; but his flesh had since fallen off and he looked quite diminutive. His
clothes were worn out, and when be saw his brethren he could not talk for weeping. The people soon
clothed him, his health became restored, his spirits revived, and he came to our camp-ground in
pretty good order." His fellow-laborers also suffered much. Travis was prostrated with typhoid fever,
and had to be left on the route homeward to the North.
[9]
John McClure succeeded Young, and had charge of the district two years, when (1810) Miles
Harper took command of it for one year, with a reinforcement of preachers, enlarging the little corps
to ten. It was now that its most eminent evangelist, and one of the most notable men of the American
ministry, William Winans, appeared there. He was born in 1788, among the rudest population of
[10]
Western Pennsylvania, "on the top of the Alleghenies, near Braddock's Grave." He was left an
orphan when only two years old; but his mother as a woman of rare capacity and piety, and taught
him to read in their home in the mountain woods, where he became a diligent student of their only
two books, the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress. In his sixteenth year he moved, with his courageous