Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, The Backwoods Preacher

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1856. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XX. METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN CANADA. In the fall of 1828 our conference sat in Madison. Indiana, October 9th. This was the only annual conference that I ever missed attending in fifty years. My wife was sorely afflicted, and was supposed to be at the gates of death, so that I did not think it my duty to leave her, though a kind Providence spared her to me a little longer, and she still lives. I was reappointed to the Illinois District. The Oneida Annual Conference was formed at the General Conference in May, 1828. This made nine annual conferences east, and eight west of the mountains. They had a membership in the nine Eastern conferences of 270,210. In the East there were of traveling preachers 984. We had in the West, of traveling preachers, 519. Of members the West had 150,894. Total number of members, 421,104; of traveling preachers, 1,503. The New-Hampshire and Vermont Conference was formed in the interim, or between the General Conferences of 1828 and 1832. It will also be remembered that Canada had existed as a separate annual conference, and was in union, as a conference, with the Methodist Episcopal Church in these United States, and was regularly supplied with American preachers, and superintended by our American bishops. Being under the British laws, that established the Catholic Church in Lower Canada, and the Church of England in Upper Canada, our people, members, and preachers labored under many civil disabilities. They thought, under all the circumstances, that it would l e better to be separated from the Methodist Episcopal Church in these United States, and organized into a distinct Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada; elect from among themselves a bishop, that should be resident among them; and thereby avoid many of those disabilities that had fallen ...