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

From this nucleus have sprung the Alabama, Louisiana, two Texas Conferences, and a part of the
Memphis Conference." [10]
It had now two districts, Mississippi and Louisiana, nine circuits, twelve preachers, and one
thousand nine hundred and forty-one members. By 1820 it reported three districts, all with state titles
-- Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama -- comprising the state of Louisiana south of the Arkansas,
all the Mississippi territory south of the Tennessee River, and stretching over the present states of
Mississippi and Alabama. It had yet but eleven "appointments" and seventeen preachers, but most
of its circuits were four or five hundred miles around, and the itinerants preached daily. Many mighty
men were subsequently in their ranks, and influential local or "located" preachers cooperated with
them extensively. Methodism here, as elsewhere in the West, was rapidly appropriating the country.
To the numerous list of important itinerants; thus far noticed, in this great ultramontane field,
scores, not to say hundreds, of similar characters might he added, such as John Lane, (generally
known as Judge Lane,) a man of "noble form and captivating manners," and who, after years of
ministerial travel, broke down, located, and, marrying into the family of the Vicks, became one of
the proprietors of Vicksburgh, a wealthy and most influential citizen and public functionary, and
always used his eminent advantages for the promotion of religion. He re-entered the itinerancy in
1822, and died in it in 1855, exclaiming, "I am ready! I have been living for this all my lifetime!" [11]
Dr. Robert L. Kennon, after laboring some years in South Carolina and Georgia, settled in Alabama,
and became one of its most eminent citizens and representative Methodists, and, re-entering the
itinerancy, died in it while attending the Conference of 1837, "a preacher," says a southern bishop,
[12]
"of very high order." Joseph Travis, after traveling thirty years in Georgia, South Carolina and
North Carolina, passed to the southwest, and continued his useful ministry in the Mississippi
Conference. Thomas L. Douglass, of North Carolina, after preaching about fourteen years with
distinguished success in the Virginia Conference, was transferred, in 1809, to Tennessee, where he
[13]
was "the instrument or the conversion of hundreds and thousands of souls a man of great dignity
and amenity, a genuine Christian gentleman, and a rare pulpit orator. He died in 1843. And, as we
pass again northward, we meet, in the Minutes, with the names of Joseph Oglesby, Charles Holliday,
Jonathan Stamper, La Roy Cole, John F. Wright, John Crane, James Gwin, Alexander Cummins,
Marcus Lindsey, William R. Raper, William W. Redman, John A. Waterman, Allen Wiley, William
Gunn, and scores of others, equally noteworthy, who were identified with western Methodist history,
more or less, during these years, and the events of whose individual lives in the ministry would make
romantic volumes.
These powerful men were under the episcopal guidance of Asbury and McKendree; leaders
[14]
worthy to command such a host." Asbury made through all these years, down to within four or five
months of his death, his annual visit to the West; but, as now in all other parts of the country, his
records give us hardly any available facts. He still endured there many hardships, especially in
crossing the mountains; but the flood of emigration had borne along hundreds of excellent Methodist
families, with whom he had been familiar in the East, and who hailed his coming in the wilderness,
often with tears, sometimes with the wildest delight. "Thus," he wrote there in 1805, "our people are
scattered abroad; but, thank the Lord! they are still in the fold, and on their way to glory." In
Kentucky, the same year, he writes, "We meet crowds directing their march to the fertile West. Their
sufferings for the present are great; but they are going to present abundance and future wealth for