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

mother, to Clermont County, Ohio. When about eighteen years old he received "thirteen and half
days'" instruction at school, the only academic education of his life. He had heard Valentine Cook,
and other celebrated itinerants, who had preached in his mother's cabin, and through most of his early
life was addicted to religious reflection. In 1808 he was licensed to preach, and sent to Limestone
Circuit, Ky. The next year he was thrown into Indiana, to the famous Vincennes Circuit, which
included "all the settlements on the Wabash and White Rivers from the Indiana line to the Ohio
River." It was there that he acquired the lifelong friendship of General Harrison, (afterward
President,) with whom he was associated in Indian perils, and who has left an eloquent estimate of
the services of Methodist preachers to the West. "Confer," wrote Harrison, when president, to one
of his political associates, "confer with my old friend William Wimans; he is one of the best and
wisest men known to me." [11]
The conference held at Shelbyville, Ky., in 1810, dispatched him to the Southern Mississippi,
where he traveled the Claiborne Circuit. At that session Asbury wrote: "We have an open door set
wide to us in Mississippi; the preachers there sent but one messenger to conference, they could not
spare more; they keep their ground like soldiers of Christ, and men of God." Winans made his way
thither through the Indian and other dangers of the wilderness route, like Gibson, Blackman, Young,
and their associates, and at once proved himself the right man for the peculiar exigencies of the
pecuniary. None of his predecessors had borne to it more gigantic energies of mind or body. The bare
catalogue of his appointments shows the devotion with which he labored through a long life for its
religious improvement, persisting in spite of untold trials, and at last fearful struggles with disease:
." Claiborne Circuit, Wilkinson, Natchez and Claiborne, two years; New Orleans, 1813-14; Natchez
and Claiborne, Wilkinson; local five years, on account of ill health; Natchez Circuit, 1821;
Mississippi District, four years; Washington Station; Washington District, three years; missionary
agent three years; superannuated, 1833; New Orleans District; Wilkinson, supernumerary; Woodville
station; agent for New Orleans Church, 1837; New Orleans District; Natchez; four years; New
Orleans district, three years; agent for Centenary College, 1846; Natches District, two years;
Woodville Station; agent for Centenary College; superannuated four years; a delegate to General
Conference nine times, and a delegate to the convention which organized the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, embracing a period of forty-five years." "And during this long term," continues our
authority, "he never sought inglorious ease; he never grew weary of well-doing; he never became
selfish and worldly. With persevering and undaunted spirit he labored on. The generation that
witnessed his coming, and most of his colleagues, went down to the grave; and still his enthusiasm,
and energy, and masculine intellect survived, and his spirit glowed like some eternal flame upon the
altar of a ruined temple. Often have I seen him, on his tours of circuit duty, scarcely able to sit in the
saddle; dragging himself into the pulpit, preach for two hours with surpassing power and unction,
and then fall down, faint and exhausted, his handkerchief stained with blood, and, for days thereafter,
motionless, hovering, as it were, between life and death. Thirty years ago, and at intervals since, he
was thought to be in a rapid decline; he was afflicted with hemorrhages, bronchitis, derangement of
the vital organs, and general debility, and physicians prohibited the excitement of the pulpit. But he
would preach; he felt called of God to preach. And what changes he witnessed! In 1810 the work of
the Mississippi preachers extended over what is now the territory of Louisiana, Mississippi, and.
Alabama Conferences. There were but ten itinerants in this great field of labor, and the whole
number of Church members five hundred and nine. Now, in these conference bounds there are more
than three hundred itinerants, and between eighty and ninety thousand Church members! The number