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

HISTORY OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
By Abel Stevens
CHAPTER XIX
METHODISM IN THE WEST, 1796 -- 1804
Western Methodism -- The Redstone Country -- Valentine Cook -- His great Public Debate --
Daniel Hitt -- James Quinn -- His long Services and Character -- Lasley Matthews and Chieuvrant,
Converted Papists and Heroic Evangelists -- Thornton Flemming -- Asa Shinn -- Methodism
Penetrates to the Erie Country -- The Roberts Family -- Local Preachers -- Robert R. Roberts -- His
Early Life and Character -- He becomes a Bishop -- His thoroughly Western Character -- His
Episcopal Residence a Log-cabin -- Illustrations of his Character -- Curious Rencounter with a
Young Preacher: Note -- Methodism in the Erie Conference -- Reaches Ohio -- Progress in Western
Virginia -- Quinn's Labors there -- Ministerial Recruits -- General Morgan -- The Holston Country
-- McKendree and Bruce -- The "Western Conference" -- Benjamin Lakin's Labors and Character
-- Valentine Cook in the Holston Country -- His subsequent Life His Death and Character -- Henry
Smith -- James McCull -- John Sale -- Judge McLean's Estimate of him
The apparent incoherency of our record of Western Methodism must still continue, for thus only
can it be true to the real condition of the Church in these early times. An individual itinerant,
traveling a circuit of five hundred or more miles; a solitary layman or local preacher, like
McCormick in the Northwestern territory, ministering to his emigrant neighbors; "small classes," the
germs of societies, rising like far-scattered lights in the wilderness, such were yet, in much of the
great West, the only facts of the denomination; but they are soon to assume continuity and
consistence, and to present one of the most consolidated and effective systems of religious provisions
in the new, if not indeed in the whole world, with stations, circuits, districts, Conferences,
Sunday-schools, academies, colleges, presses, and hundreds of thousands of communicants, and
millions of congregational adherents. It is now, however, in the minute study of its inceptive history
that we are to learn its real genius and its best lessons for the future.
We have seen its progress, down to 1796, in its first field, the ultra-Allegheny region of
Pennsylvania, called the Redstone country. The present period opens there with five circuits and nine
preachers, comprehended in one district. Valentine Cook commands the little band as presiding
elder. We find in it James Paynter, who had pioneered among the Tioga Mountains, and Nathaniel
B. Mills, whom we have met in the Wyoming Valley, its first itinerant preacher, and also an
associate of Lee in the earliest struggles of the Church in New England. Such was the itinerancy of
these days. Cook was the champion of the field. He flew over his district like a herald -- a king's
messenger -- proclaiming the gospel, night and day, directing his preachers, and rousing the scattered
settlements. The West made little use of the press in his day; public debate, in the shade of the
woods, was the usual resort of the people and their leaders for the solution of both political and
theological questions. Though Methodist preachers disliked this doubtful mode of discussing divine
truth, they sometimes had to conform to the custom. In the Redstone country Cook was challenged
to such a debate by a clergyman of the Scotch Seceders, a denomination somewhat prevalent there.