A History Of The Rise Of Methodism In America - Media Sabda Org

A HISTORY
OF THE
RISE OF METHODISM IN AMERICA
by
John Lednum
CHAPTER 30
At the Deer Creek Conference, there were fourteen preachers received on trial. The name of
Joseph Rees, who as a local preacher traveled the circuit this year, also appears. Of the fourteen, two
-- Hollis Hanson and Robert Wooster stopped after one year. Samuel Strong traveled two years.
Edward Pride, probably a native of Amelia county, Virginia, continued to travel for four years.
Edward Bailey, a native of Ireland, a useful preacher, who bore a testimony for God to the last, died
in 1780, while traveling with Mr. Asbury in Virginia. The other nine -- Caleb B. Pedicord, William
Gill, John Tunnell, John Littlejohn, John Dickens, Lee Roy Cole, Reuben Ellis, Joseph Cromwell,
and Thomas S. Chew, continued longer in the work, and were more generally known.
Mr. Reuben Ellis, a native of North Carolina, was one of the first traveling preachers from that
state. He also was one of the original elders of the Christmas Conference of 1784. For nearly twenty
years he traveled and preached in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia. He was a weighty and powerful preacher, and many appreciated his value in the Church.
His godliness made him contented with merely food and raiment. His last station was in Baltimore,
where, in 1796, in February, he died, and was there buried, leaving but few behind him that were,
in every respect, his equals.
Mr. Lee Roy Cole was a native of Virginia, born in 1749. The same year that he embraced
religion, he united with the Methodists and began to travel a circuit. He was ordained an elder soon
after the Church was organized. In 1785, he was expelled; but soon after was restored to the traveling
connection -- probably from a conviction that he had been improperly disowned. He served the
Methodist Church as a traveling or local preacher for more than fifty yeas. In the latter end of his life,
he was a superannuated member of Kentucky Conference. He triumphed over death in 1810, in his
eighty-first year. He sleeps in Kentucky.
Mr. Thomas S. Chew. We have already noticed his imprisonment in Mr. Down's house, which
added this family to the Methodists.
We find him in the Minutes of 1785, standing as an elder for West Jersey; this was the first year
that this office was known in the M. E. Church. He stood high on account of rank and gifts. His last
appointment was on the Peninsula, where he was acting as elder over a district. But, alas! he met
with a Delilah a few miles below Milford, in Sussex county, Del., at Mr. T.'s house, by whom he fell.
He professed restoration to the Divine favor; but had to retire from the work. He was entered, as
desisting from traveling, on the Minutes of 1788, but was considered as expelled.
Mr. Joseph Cromwell, we think, was a native of Baltimore county, raised near to Baltimore. We
have supposed that he was the individual that Mr. Shadford was sent for to visit in the year 1774.