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

of "through the interior of Louisiana" as "a man of the rarest qualities, and especially as one of the
most eminent saints." [8]
Many other itinerants, worthy of commemoration, venerated in the local traditions of the Church,
but with hardly other record than the vague allusions of the Minutes, were added year after year to
the pioneer band Not a few were raised up in the new field itself, and some were even sent to the
older sections of the denomination. It can hardly fail to surprise northern Methodists to observe in
the Minutes, attached to the old Opelousas or Attakapas Circuit, in the heart of Louisiana, the name
of Daniel De Vinne, a laborer still abroad and vigorous, in the New York East Conference, though
nearly half a century has passed since he followed the tracks of Axley and Nolley in this wild region.
Born in Ireland in 1793, he was brought by his parents to America when not a year old, and became
a Methodist in Albany in 1810. He caught the spirit of the itinerancy of that day, and longed for
missionary work. In 1818 he joined an association, formed in New York by Joshua Soule, for the
support of Mark Moore, of Baltimore, as a Methodist missionary in New Orleans; a society which
was the germ of the Missionary Society of the Church, organized a few months later. The same year
he went to Louisiana, and began a Sunday-school for slaves, which was soon dispersed by
opposition. He ascended the river, and labored on the Natchez Circuit; was received into the
Conference of 1819, and sent to the Opelousas Circuit, where he traveled two years, encountering
the severest hardships; preaching every day, except Monday, to the whites, and every night to the
slaves, besides leading classes, and traveling from thirty to forty miles a day over prairies without
roads or bridges; fording the bayous, or, when they were high, swimming them, or passing over by
floats of decayed logs, tied together by grape-vines. A hearty hater of slavery, he devoted himself
[9]
with much zeal to the religious welfare of its victims, and they were his most ardent friends. His
circuit was a range of five hundred and sixty-four miles, from Alexandria, on Red River, to the Gulf.
His salary the first year, "after paying ferriage and horse-shoeing," was less than thirteen dollars; the
second year "it advanced prodigiously to sixty-seven dollars." For some years he did faithful service
in various parts of this grand field, and returned to the North only when it began to be amply
supplied by ministerial recruits from its own Churches, or adjacent Conferences.
In 1817 appears in the Minutes, for the first time, the title of the "Mississippi Conference,"
ordered by the General Conference of 1816. It was organized at the house of William Foster, at Pine
Ridge, Adams County, about seven miles above Natchez, Bishop Roberts presiding. A southern
authority, writing in 1858, says: "The little company of pioneers then assembled were a feeble band,
nine in number, all told. They had to provide for the spiritual wants of the people, so far as
Methodism was concerned, from the Chattahoochee to the Tennessee River, and from the Cherokee
nation east to the Sabine River west. The little company all slept under the same roof, and ate at the
same hospitable table. The cottage -- for now it seems quite diminutive -- still stands, almost
unchanged. It is worthy of remark that four of that little band, at the end of forty-one years, still
survive. Five have finished their course with joy. Those who have gone to their reward are Thomas
Griffin, John Menifee, John Lane, Ashley Hewitt, and Alexander Fleming. The survivors are Peter
James, Elisha Lott, Thomas Nixon, and Elijah Gent. Dr. Winans was local at that time, but present,
and assisting at the Conference. One was received on trial, Thomas Owens, the first recruit in the
territory. In looking over the region to be supplied by this little band we are constrained to exclaim,
What hath God wrought! They went out with their staff; but now they are more than three bands.