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 53
In December, 1780, Mr. Asbury employed Mr. Charles Twyford on the Sussex Circuit, that Mr.
Rowe might go down to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, to see what opening there was there for
Methodism. Mr. Samuel Rowe was, it seems, the first Methodist preacher that went to Accomac
county. He returned to his circuit in a few weeks' time. From this time, Methodist preachers visited
the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
The first appointments east of the Pocomoke river, were at Melvin's and Captain Downing's. Soon
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after, the Methodists preached at Colonel Burton's, Colonel Paramore's, and at Garrettson's
Chapel. The first society in Accomac county was formed in 1783, consisting of five persons, one of
whom was Christiana Newton, who was awakened in 1782, by hearing a Methodist preacher
performing family worship in a neighbor's house -- most likely, the first time she ever heard one
pray. Soon after, she yielded to the persuasions of her gay associates, against her convictions, and
attended a ball. When she returned from the ball, such were the rebukes of her conscience, that she
cast all her ball-going finery into the flames; and, in holy revenge, burnt them to ashes -- never
afterwards wearing useless ornaments. She married Mr. Isaiah Bagwell. After living in sweet
communion with the Methodists for fifty-six years, she died, in hope of blissful immortality, aged
eighty-one years. At her death, she was the last of the five original Methodists of Accomac county.
About 1783, the preachers began to occupy Northampton county. In 1784 there were about one
hundred Methodists on the Eastern Shore of Virginia; and now the Methodists were in every county
on the Peninsula.
Messrs. Davis, Laws, and Purnell, were among the first to have Methodist preaching in their
houses, in Worcester county, Maryland. In 1782 Messrs. Freeborn Garrettson, Woolman Hickson,
and John Magary, were stationed on Somerset Circuit. One of the appointments on this circuit was
at Robin Davis', near Indiantown, in Worcester. Near by lived Elijah Laws, a vestryman in the
Church of England, as it had been called. He gave the Methodist preachers a hearing, and called
them deceivers, and refused to hear them again. He had a daughter, whose name was Rhoda, then
in her twelfth year, who had been raised in the views that church people then generally had, of the
innocency of dancing, and other worldly amusements. Rhoda paid a visit to a widow lady of her
acquaintance, with whom she went, for the first time, to hear a Methodist preach. Woolman Hickson
was the preacher. After he had opened up the plan of salvation, he applied his discourse, in which
he told his hearers, that all actual sinners, including dancers, would, unless they repented and were
pardoned, be damned to all eternity. Rhoda could not feel that she was guilty of any sin which he
named, unless dancing was a sin.