Early Episcopal Methodist History in Marietta, Ohio In the year of 1806, young Rev. Peter Cartwright (his family from Virginia, later moving to Kentucky) was assigned to the Marietta Circuit. From his autobiography, he has this to say about his appointment in Ohio and West Virginia. �Marietta was at the mouth of the Muskingum River, where it emptied into the Ohio. This circuit extended along the north bank of the Ohio, one hundred and fifty miles, crossed over the Ohio River at the mouth of the Little Kanawha and up that stream to Hughes River, then east to Middle Island. I suppose it was three hundred miles round. I had to cross the Ohio River four times every round. It was a poor and hard circuit at that time. Marietta and the country round were settled at an early day by a colony of Yankees. At the time of my appointment I had never seen a Yankee, and I had heard dismal stories about them. It was said they lived almost entirely on pumpkins, molasses, fat meat, and hohea tea; moreover, that they could not bear loud and zealous sermons and they had brought on their learned preachers with them, and they read their sermons, and were always criticizing us poor backwoods preachers. When my appointment was read out [at Conference], it distressed me greatly. I went to Bishop Asbury and begged him to supply my place, let me go home. The old father took me in his arms, and said, �O no, my son; go in the name of the Lord. It will make a man of you.� Ah, thought I, if this is the way to make men, I do not want to be a man. I cried over it bitterly and prayed too. But on I started� If ever I saw hard times, surely it was this year; yet many of the people were kind, and treated me friendly. I had hard work to keep soul and body together. The first Methodist family I stopped with there, the lady was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but a thorough Universalist. She was a thin-faced, Roman-nosed, loquacious Yankee, glib on the tongue, and you may depend on it, I had a hard race to keep up with her, though I found it a good school, for it set me to reading my Bible. And here permit me to say, of all the isms that I ever heard of, they were here. These descendants of the Puritans were generally educated but their ancestors were rigid predestinarians; and as they were sometimes favored with a little light on their moral powers, and could just �see men as trees walking,� they jumped into Deism, Universalism, Unitarianism, etc., etc. I verily believe it was the best school I ever entered. They waked me up on all sides; Methodism was feeble, and I had to battle or run, and I resolved on the former. The Methodists had no meeting-house in Marietta. We had to preach in the court-house when we could get a chance. The Congregationalists opened their Academy for me to preach in (occasionally). I will here state something like the circumstances I found myself in, at the close of my labors on this hard circuit. I had been from my father�s house about three years; was five hundred miles from home; my horse had gone blind; my saddle was worn out; my bridle reins had been eaten up and replaced, (after a sort) at least a dozen times; and my clothes had been patched till it was difficult to detect the original. I had concluded to try to make my way home, and get another outfit. I was in Marietta, and had just seventy-five cents in my pocket. How I would get home and pay my way I could not tell. [He did make it home and became one of the most successful pioneer preachers in American history. For over half a century he rode wilderness circuits from the Appalachians to the Mississippi.] For genealogists, we wish Rev. Cartwright and others like him, had kept better records of the funerals he preached; and weddings he performed during his travels, but alas, those records are not always available. Go to http://www.gcah.org/Conference/umcdirectory.htm to find out more about early Methodist records. Source: Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, 1785-1872, introduction, bibliography and index by Charles L. Wallis, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1956; pg 75-78. First published in 1856. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.