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

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Conference till the next year. he was a pioneer of Methodism in many regions, in Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Virginia, and Kentucky, suffering much from miasmatic fevers, and mobs. In his later ministry
he occupied prominent appointments in the Eastern states. He wielded a strong and sharp pen, and
became a champion of the secession which led to the organization of the Methodist Protestant
Church. Four times he suffered attacks of mental derangement, and died in an insane asylum in 1853.
He published several works, of no ordinary ability: in 1813, "An Essay on the Plan of Salvation;"
in 1820, a treatise on "The Benevolence and Rectitude of the Supreme Being;" in 1824 he
commenced his numerous and spirited articles on Methodist reform "in the "Mutual Rights," a
periodical of Baltimore. He was, at least in his latter years, a robust, corpulent man, with an
expressive eye, an ample forehead, large mouth, pale complexion, black hair, and richly mellow
voice; his in intellect was of the highest order found among the strong but uneducated men of the
Methodist ministry of his times. As a preacher he was pre-eminently able and powerful logical, clear,
and full of suasive force. "Among all the sons of men, I never found one superior to him in
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ministerial qualifications," writes one who knew him during forty years. He had no imagination,
no poetical ornamentation; his power arose solely from concentrated thought and moral feeling.
Throughout the remainder of the present period he did brave service for the Church on Redstone,
Chenango, Hockhocking, and Guyandotte Circuits. With such men were associated, through more
or less of this period, Robert Manly, Jesse Stoneman, James Hunter, Joseph Shane, Joseph
Chieuvrant; Thomas Daughaday, Thomas Budd, Shadrach Bostwick, and others, some of whom did
notable service, to be hereafter recorded. By 1804 they had extended the Redstone District (now
called after the Monongahela) far and wide; it reached into the Erie country, the wilds of Ohio and
Western Virginia, and embraced nine vast circuits, over which fourteen itinerants were heralding the
gospel and organizing Churches.
In penetrating into the more northern region, now the vigorous Erie Conference, Methodism had
its usual frontier struggles. In 1798 a family by the name of Roberts settled in Chenango; about the
same time two Irish local preachers, Jacob Gurwell and Thomas McClelland, ("very respectable
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preachers,") began to labor among the settlers, proclaiming the word in their cabins and in the open
air under trees. They formed a class this year, and appointed a youth, Robert R. Roberts, its leader;
he thus became the first leader of the first class in the Erie Conference, and was destined to become
one of the most effective evangelists and bishops of the Church which had found him in these remote
woods.
He was born in Frederick County, Md., in 1778. In 1785 the family emigrated over the
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mountains to the Ligonier Valley, Westmoreland County, Pa. There they lived, in the woods, for
some years, without other religious means than their domestic Bible. When young Roberts was about
ten years old, Jacob Lurton, Lasley Matthews, and James O. Cull reached this settlement, and
preached to them the doctrines of Methodism. Cull was a "son of thunder," and under one of his
sermons both Roberts and his mother were deeply affected. Subsequently he heard the voice of his
sister in secret prayer, and his heart was more deeply stirred. It was not long before the entire family
joined the Church. Young Roberts was now a stalwart youth, wearing, says his biographer, the
common backwoods costume: the broad-rimmed, low-crowned, white-wool hat, the hunting shirt
of tow linen, buckskin breeches, and moccasin shoes. He read assiduously the books of Wesley and
Fletcher. His home was the Methodist place of worship, the class-meetings were held, and the
itinerants entertained there, and from them he obtained advantages which he prized through life.