History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

the power of his piety and the originality of his mind, that his preaching was overwhelming at times.
He applied himself to his own cultivation even to exhaustion, reading Hebrew fluently, and was a
strong friend of education. Though six feet tall, he was of frail structure, and yet won for himself the
distinction of being without equal in his day among his brethren. In 1801 he was attacked, in
Charleston, S C., by a mob, for his antislavery deliverances, dragged from the church and held under
a pump until he would have died but for the interposition of a Mrs. Martha Kugley, who rescued him
from their infuriated hands. As the result, he fell into a consumption, and died at the home of Joshua
Wells, in 1807, and his rescuer also died from the abuse she received, and the wetting at the same
pump. William Watters has often been mentioned, and deserves further notice as the first American
Methodist preacher. He lived in Fairfax County, Va., and spent most of his time about the cities of
Alexandria, Georgetown, and Washington. He entered and retired from the active ranks several
times, and was of conservative opinions, though sometimes inclining to liberal views, and then again
swinging back to the old moorings. He survived until 1833, in the eighty-second year of his age.
Some of his brother's descendants in Harford County, Md., were stanch Reformers in 1827-30. Philip
Gatch has also been associated with stirring times and events, and was a close friend of Watters's,
and one of the most useful and notable men of Methodism, but had the misfortune to be but little
noticed in the average eulogies, though Hon. John McLean wrote a biography of him. William
Gassaway also fills a niche in the temple of heroic preachers of the Southland. William Ryland and
James Smith may be coupled together. The former was six times elected chaplain to Congress, and
William Pinckney pronounced him the greatest pulpit orator he had ever heard. James Smith began
to preach at sixteen years of age. He was a man of high intellect, but as a preacher in marked contrast
with Ryland, fervor and pathos being his characteristics. He was remarkable for the physical
difference in his eyes, one being a soft blue and the other a dark hazel. He was an able debater. He
died in Baltimore in 1827, after taking an earnest and able part for Reform, in 1822-25, as his
contributions to the Wesleyan Repository and The Mutual Rights attest.
In the Middle States, Dr. Chandler and Solomon Sharpe and Thomas Smith and Sylvester
Hutchinson and Henry Boehm deserve mention conspicuously did space permit. The latter published
his "Reminiscences," covering a period of more than eighty years. He survived to be a centenarian.
Jacob Gruber for his piety and eccentricities is remembered, and a fund of stories is told of his
preaching and methods in revivals. Peter Vannest, Thomas Burch, William Thatcher, and Billy
Hibbard, the last notable all over the East and North for his humor and independence and rapturous
religion. He labored for fifty years and died in 1844. Samuel Mervinis, another name never to be
forgotten from Canada all along the Atlantic coast, while the annals of Methodism live. Valentine
Cook and William Colbert, both heroes in the strife, the former a tempestuous preacher, and the
latter singularly acute and successful in his itinerant work. Lorenzo Dow was a beacon light, but he
burned strange fire, and could never be brought under the severe discipline of the Episcopacy. Now
he is in the Conference, and now he is out. As an independent evangelist he had no equal, and
thousands date their conversion to his preaching. His biography and literary remains make a large
quarto volume. He has been previously noticed. James Paynter, a strange name to modern Methodist
ears, yet he labored for forty-eight years, and was as successful as he was indefatigable. And Alward
White, thirty-nine years in the work, and James Moore and James Polhamus and James Smith, called
the Irish Jimmy to distinguish him from the other James Smith, known for the same purpose as
"Baltimore James Smith," and Morris Howe, and Jonathan Newman of stentorian voice who "rolled
out peal after peal like the roar of distant thunder," and Timothy Dewy, the profound thinker, a great