A Short History Of The Methodists... - Media Sabda Org

on Christmas-day. The meeting-house in Readfield was dedicated on the 21st day of June, 1795. But
the meeting-house in Monmouth was not dedicated until the last day of May, 1796.
The first quarterly meeting that was ever held in the Province of Maine, was in Monmouth, which
began on the 23d day of June, 1795.
The first conference that was ever held in the Province of Maine, was in Readfield, which began
on the 29th day of August, 1798. We had ten traveling preachers at it, and about 200 communicants.
It was not five years from the time the people there, first heard a Methodist; yet after they began to
unite with us, they flourished and increased so fast, that now we could collect at one meeting about
200 members of our society. When we made a return of the number in society in 1795, which was
about eight months from the time we joined the first members together, we had 268 in society.
The second circuit in the Province of Maine, was called Portland; we had preached in it
occasionally for some time, and had the circuit regularly formed in the beginning of 1795; but it was
not taken on the annual minutes until the conference which was held in July. The Methodists began
to preach in some of the towns in that circuit for the first time as follows:
The first time we preached in Portland was on the 12th day of September, 1793, and on the 13th
in Freeport. On the 9th day of January, 1794, in Buxton; on the 10th in Gorham; on the 7th day of
April, in Perjepscot, and on the 7th also in New Gloucester; on the 2d of July, in Turner; on the 16th,
in Gray; on the 27th of December in Falmouth; and on the 11th of December, 1795, in Scarborough.
The first class was formed in the town of Portland about the first of October 1795. The first
quarterly meeting for that circuit was held in Portland, on the 4th of December 1795. We here
administered the Lord's Supper, for the first time in that circuit.
The first meeting-house that was built for the Methodists in that circuit, was that in Falmouth,
which was dedicated on the 19th day of June 1797.
The third circuit formed in the Province of Maine, was called Penobscot, which took in both sides
of the Penobscot river. Mr. Joshua Hall was the first preacher that went to that circuit, after it was
formed. He was sent there from the New London conference in 1795.
The first time that the Methodists preached in the towns belonging to that circuit were as follows:
on the 29th of September, 1793, in Penobscot; on the 1st of October, in Buckstown; on the 5th in
Orrington; on the 6th in Hampden; and on the 7th in Frankfort; on the 9th at the twenty-five mile
pond, and on the 18th of April 1795, in Bangor; on the 4th of June, at Union River; on the 5th in
Blue hill; on the 8th in Prospect; on the 9th in Belfast; on the 11th of July, 1797, in Castine; on the
14th in Vinalhaven. The first class formed in Vinalhaven, on Fox-Island, was on the 14th of July
1797,
There was a great revival of religion in the Penobscot circuit in the course of the last mentioned
year; it began about the first of the summer, and it spread through several towns: many professed to
be awakened and converted, and some of the Christians professed to be sanctified. I suppose there