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had a few nights previous been murdered by the Indians. Thus the fresh graves of the dead signaled the perils that awaited them.

"The conference was composed of six members, namely, Francis Poythress, James Haw, Wilson Lee, Stephen Brooks, Barnabas McHenry, and Peter Massie. Three elders were ordained, preaching had noon and night, souls were converted, and the fallen restored. A plan was fixed for a school, called Bethel, and three hundred pounds in land and money subscribed toward its establishment.

"The conference lasted but two days. On Monday, the 17th, Bishop Asbury preached, ten miles from Lexington, to a large number of people, with great power. 'The house was crowded day and night, and often the floor was covered with the slain of the Lord, and the house and the woods resounded with the shouts of the converted.' Thus, the visit of the bishop, the first bishop of any denomination ever in Kentucky, was greatly blessed and a fresh impulse given to the infant church in Kentucky. Remarkable as was his career, born in England, converted when quite a youth, holding public meetings at seventeen, preaching before he was eighteen, appointed by Mr. Wesley to America at the age of twenty-six, and at the Christmas conference in Baltimore, in 1784, unanimously elected bishop, there was a singular fitness in his being the pioneer bishop of the pioneer State, sent to organize the pioneer conference.

1"Two additional circuits in Kentucky, the Limestone and Madison, were added this year, and nine preachers, instead of six, appointed, among them, for the first time, Henry Birchett, David Haggard, Samuel Tucker, and Joseph Lillard. At the close of this year were reported fourteen hundred and fifty-nine white and ninety-four colored members, a net increase of four hundred and sixty-three. At the conference of 1800, there were five circuits in Kentucky, to which six preachers were appointed. The membership then reported was seventeen hundred and forty-one."

2 The Presbyterian Church well concedes that Rev. David Rice may justly claim precedence over all others, as its pioneer founder and promoter in Kentucky. In 1783, he was among the emigrants to Kentucky. His first active work was to gather into congregational order the scattered brotherhood of that church, at Danville, Cane Run, and the Forks of Dick's river. Besides his regular duties as a minister of the Gospel, and the organization of a number of congregations, he was zealously engaged in advancing the cause of education. The estimation in which he was held by the public may be inferred from his election as a member of the convention which met in Danville in 1792, to which we have previously referred. In the framing of the first Constitution of Kentucky, he then exerted himself to effect the abolition of slavery. Father Rice, as he was familiarly called, was a man of plain and practical talents, rather than of command or display. His judgment was sound, his disposition conservative, and his deportment

1 Collins, Vol. I., p. 446.

2 Collins, Vol. I., p. 457.

exemplary; just such a combination of traits in a man of purpose and diligence, to accomplish large and enduring results in a lifetime.

He is said to have spent much time in prayer for self-devotion and discipline. His person was slender, but tall and active; and even at the age of seventy, he was wonderfully alert. He died in Green county, in June, 1816, aged eightythree, exclaiming with expiring breath: "O, when shall I be free from sin and sorrow?"

Mr. Rice was followed by Rev. Adam Rankin, who gathered together the Church at Lexington, and by Rev. James Crawford, who settled at Walnut Hill, in 1784. In 1786, Revs. Thomas Craighead and Andrew McClure were added to the number. These ministers were shortly after organized into a Presbytery, under the name of the Presbytery of Transylvania, a classical and euphonious epithet which had already found usage in other relations. All these ministers were from Virginia, except Mr. Craighead, who came from North Carolina. Rev. Terah Templin received ordination in 1785, and located in Washington county, where he organized several congregations, and faithfully evangelized. Later on, he organized and supplied destitute congregations in Livingston county. Churches were organized at Salem and Paris by Rev. Andrew McClure. Craighead assumed charge of Shiloh congregation, in Sumner county, Tennessee, shortly after arriving in Kentucky. Here he was suspected of preaching the doctrine of Pelagianism, and became unpopular. In 1805, a commission was appointed by the Synod of Kentucky, having jurisdiction, which was directed to investigate. the question of his soundness. The result was the suspension of Mr. Craighead from the ministry. Though he made efforts to be restored, this was not done until the year 1824. He shortly after died. Mr. Craighead was a man of commanding talents, and fervid, impressive eloquence. The Hon. John Breckinridge said of him, that his discourses made a more lasting impression upon his mind than those of any other man he had ever heard.

Among his brotherhood, Rev. John Poage Campbell stood pre-eminent for brilliancy and learning, of the missionaries of the earlier age of the Church. He was a graduate of the Hampden Sydney College, and was licensed to preach in 1792. He assumed charge of the churches at Flemingsburg and Smyrna in 1795, and afterward was in charge successively, of the churches at Danville, Versailles, Lexington, and other points. An appreciative writer says of him, that he was possessed of an acute and discriminating mind, was an accurate and well-read theologian, an able polemic, and decidedly the most popular, talented, and influential minister of his day. A number of his published writings, yet in print, bear testimony to his rare attainments.

In 1793, Rev. James Blythe was ordained pastor of Pisgah and Clear Creek Churches, and to these he ministered for forty years. He ranked with the noted and able ministers of the church, and devoted his talents alike

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to the interests of education as well as the church. He took a prominent part in the establishment of Kentucky Academy; and when that institution. was merged into the University of Transylvania, he was appointed to a professorship in the same, and subsequently fulfilled the duties of acting president for over twelve years.

A man of historic eminence also was the Rev. Archibald Cameron. He was the son of Scotch Presbyterian parentage, and the family moved to Kentucky in 1781, and settled on a farm at the foot of "Cameron's Knob," about six miles from Bardstown. He studied theology under Rev. David Rice, and was licensed to preach in 1795. His labors were largely confined to Nelson, Jefferson, and Shelby counties, and he was mainly instrumental in building up the churches at Shelbyville, Mulberry, Six-mile, Shiloh, Olivet, and other points in range. Mr. Cameron's mind was cast in the finest mold, and cultivated to the highest degree. He was a man of great shrewdness, and gifted with keen powers of satire. As a pastor, he was highly esteemed and much beloved by the people of his charge; as a friend, he was frank, generous, and confiding; as a divine, he ranked in the first class, and was regarded by all who knew him as the ablest man in the Synod. He was the author of many published writings of repute, and extensively read.

As early as 1786, the Presbytery of Transylvania met in the court-house at Danville. There were at this time twelve congregations in a fair state of organization. There were present five ministers, Revs. Rice, Rankin, McClure, Crawford, and Templin. There were also present five ruling elders, Messrs. Richard Steele, David Gray, John Borel, Joseph Read, and Jeremiah Frame.

From the journal of Richard Henderson, of date Sunday, May 28, 1775, we read: "Divine service, for the first time in Kentucky, was performed by the Rev. John Lythe, of the Church of England." On Saturday, May 13th, previous, his diary says, alluding to the grand old elm tree at Boonesborough: "This divine tree, or rather one of the many proofs of the existence from all eternity of its divine Author, is to be our church and council chamber. Having many things on our hands, we have not had time to erect seats and a pulpit, but hope, by Sunday, sevennight, to perform divine service in a public manner, and that to a set of scoundrels, who scarcely believe in God or fear a devil, if we are to judge from the looks, words, or actions of most of them."

This was not certainly an auspicious and persuasive beginning for one accustomed to the aesthetic forms and services of the Church of England, and we learn that Mr. Lythe soon after left Kentucky. Of the Episcopal element in the State previous to 1800, Marshall says: "There were in the country, and chiefly from Virginia, many Episcopalians, but these had formed no church, there being no parson or minister to take charge of such. This very relaxed state of that society may have been occasioned by the war

of the Revolution, which cut off the source of clerical supply derived then mainly from Great Britain. There remained, even in Virginia, a real deficiency of preachers. Education is, with this fraternity, a necessary qualification for administering the affairs of both Church and State.

1 A church was founded in Lexington as early as 1794, but there was no organized parish until 1809. Thus it may be said that the Episcopal Church. did not begin its organized work, and become a factor, as such, in the work of evangelizing Kentucky, in the earlier pioneer days, or until after the year 1800. The same author attests that, not long after the war for independence, a flood of revolutionary atheism came in, and there was no adequate barrier to oppose it. Skepticism, or a contemptuous indifference to religion, prevailed to a deplorable extent among the educated classes.

This description applies with even more emphasis to Kentucky, as the frontier, than to the older portions of Virginia.

2 The following extract from a historic article in the Courier-Journal, of August 2, 1883, gives the origin of the churches of four of the leading denominations in Louisville:

"Many of the early preachers of Kentucky, and among the number John Whitaker, Tarah Thompson, Elijah Craig, William Hickman, Samuel Shannon, John Morris, Benjamin Lynn, Nelson Lee, William Taylor, Joshua Carman, and Henry Burrhett, visited Louisville, and no doubt preached at the forts and court-house, but it was some years before there was a church here. In a view of Louisville taken by Captain Gilbert Imlay, and published in the topographical description of North America, in 1792, there is a building on the north-west corner of Main and Twelfth streets, presenting the unmistakable appearance of a church. Tradition says there was a church on lot No. 49, originally owned by Jacob Myers, close to the old Twelfthstreet fort, which accords with the location of such a structure in the picture of Imlay. And the late Rev. James Craik, in his sketch of Christ church, in this city, states that Rev. Mr. Kavanaugh, an Episcopal minister, came to the Beargrass settlement, in Jefferson county, with the Hites, in 1784. Mr. Craik fixes the date of his coming to Kentucky too early; but the minister meant by him was the Rev. Williams Kavanaugh, father of the late bishop of the Methodist Church. Whether he was rector of the church on the corner of Main and Twelfth as early as 1792, or ever, we know not; but we do know that he was rector of an Episcopal church in the city of Louisville as early as 1803, and this was eight years before any other denomination of Christians claims to have had a church in Louisville. In those early times it was the custom in chancery suits, when personal process could not be served upon non-residents, to issue what was called a warning order, which, besides being posted at the court-house door, and published in a newspaper, was read at church immediately after divine service. Such an

1 Bishop Smith, in Collins' History, Vol. I., p. 438.

2 By Col. R. T. Durrett.

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415 order was entered by our old chancery court in the cases of Corneal against La Cassagne, and Hite against Marsh, at the September term, 1803, and directed by the court to be posted at the court-house door, published in the the Farmers' Library for eight weeks, and 'read at the Rev. Williams Kavanaugh's meeting-house, in Louisville, on some Sunday immediately after divine service.' We now have before us a copy of the Farmers' Library, in which this order of the court appears; and we take it for granted that Rev. Williams Kavanaugh read it to his congregation in Louisville, and that he had a church there at the time, as stated by the order of the court, in which to read it. He was originally of the Methodist denomination, but became an Episcopalian in early life, and continued in that faith. In 1806, he moved to the town of Henderson, in Kentucky, where he died the same year, in charge of the Episcopal Church there.

"In 1811, the Rev. Stephen Theodore Badin erected a Catholic Church near the north-west corner of Tenth and Main streets, which was the second church in our city. It was a framed house, upon the Gothic style of architecture, and quite an improvement upon the log-house in which Rev. Williams Kavanaugh had officiated. The ground between this church and Eleventh street was used as a graveyard; and years afterward, when Eleventh street was cut through to the river, and when the warehouse upon the corner of Main and Eleventh had its foundation dug, the coffins, the bones, the cerements, and even the flesh of some buried there were shockingly exposed to public view. One grave was opened whose occupant, once a beautiful young woman, had a history full of that sorrow which strikes to the depths of the heart, but we have not space to tell it now.

"In 1812, John and James Bate gave to the Methodist Church the south half of half acre lot No. 131, on the north side of Market street, between Seventh and Eighth. Here a brick house was erected, in which Bishop Asbury, traveling through the country in 1812, preached on Wednesday, October 22d, and about which he made the following note in his journal: ‘I preached in Louisville at 11 o'clock in our neat brick house, thirty-four by thirty-eight feet. I had a sickly, serious congregation. This is a growing town and a handsome place, but the falls or ponds make it unhealthy. We lodged at Farquar's.'

"The fourth church in the city was built by the Presbyterians, on the west side of Fourth street, between Market and Jefferson, in 1816. It was famous for its sweet-toned bell, which not only summoned to serious worship, but began the fashion of ringing at 10 o'clock at night, which has since been one of the peculiarities of our city. This church was burned down in 1836, and nothing about it was more universally regretted than the loss of the bell.

"In 1825, Christ church, on the east side of Second, between Green and Walnut streets, was built, on a lot given by Peter B. Ormsby. Mr. Ormsby was then the owner of a five-acre lot where the church was built, and it was