Columbia (Btttotitfftp 
 
 THE LIBRARIES 
 
 Bequest of 
 
 Frederic Bancroft 
 
 1860-1945 
 
g 1832 '■§£) 
 
 Til OY GOiXIivRJi^Wi 
 
 E MI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 Q^1882 
 
First Half Century 
 
 LIFE AND WORK 
 
 TROY CONFERENCE 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 BY ERASTUS WENTWORTH, 
 
 MEMBER OK THE CONFERENCE IN ITS FIRST AND LAST TWO DECAD1 3. 
 
 TROY, N. V.: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE T:MEC OKnCK, ,{K« >.\ i ► "\ V.Y AM' IHIK1> STREET. 
 
 '■ .'.•- ;'ss.>. - • ■ 
 

 Text : — " What mean these stones ?' 
 
 
 i • • • • » • • 
 
 • • • • • t« 
 
 • • . < • • » • 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL 
 
 The general-in-chief of the Israelitish forces, 
 and leader of a great national migration, only 
 obeyed a common human impulse when he com- 
 manded twelve stones to be taken from the bed 
 of the divided Jordan and piled in Gilgal as a 
 lasting memorial of a signal event in the nation's 
 history. 
 
 The monumental instinct is universal. All 
 ages and lands have their rude or labored me- 
 mentoes of past events and times gone by. The 
 graceful pagodas, rising story above story, a 
 cpnspicuous feature of the Chinese landscape, 
 are venerable commemoratives. So are the Dru- 
 idic monoliths of Salisbury plain and the rock- 
 wonders of Luxor, Karnak and Elephanta. Amid 
 the silences of Persepolis and Palmyra ; the 
 Sphinxes and pyramids of Egypt ; the winged 
 bulls of Nineveh ; the ruined arches and temples 
 of Rome and Carthage ; the tombs of Athens 
 and Cyprus ; successive generations of explorers 
 — Layards, Belzonis, Champollions, Schliemans 
 and Cesnolas pause and inquire, "what mean 
 these stones." 
 
 Youngest in the family of nations, America 
 already chronicles her Bunker Hill and Gettys- 
 burgh achievements in marble shafts and granite 
 
4 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 obelisks. Yet, there are better and more endur- 
 ing preservatives than these. 
 
 Historical happenings, luckily, are independent 
 of rocks and stones which the rains abrade, light-, 
 nings and earthquakes shatter, and sands bury. 
 Oral traditions, written records, ballads, epics, 
 are better custodians. 
 
 The pen erects monuments more durable than 
 brass. Customs, and public periodical observ- 
 ances, especially those of celebrative character, 
 are more instructive to new generations than 
 monumental piles. Passover and Purim were 
 more educative to the young Jew than Gilgal 
 stone heaps ; the semi-centennial jubilee vastly 
 more striking than the weekly Sabbath. 
 
 The fiftieth anniversary of marriage is so much 
 more notable than the original wedding as to be 
 fitly styled " golden." Centennials and semi- 
 centennials are marked periods in history. 
 American Methodism, like the American nation, 
 has already celebrated its hundredth birth-day. 
 The Methodist Episcopal Church will, two years 
 hence, honor the historical Christmas that made 
 it an independent organization. 
 
 Fifty years ago, the Troy Conference, a sub- 
 section of that church, came into being, and we 
 are here to offer due respect to the occasion, to 
 connect by living links 1882 with 1832; and to 
 send, by living messengers, brotherly greetings 
 to the conference Centennial session. Some on 
 this floor, to-night, will survive in 1932. 
 
 In 1828, I heard a half-century sermon from 
 my own old Norwich, Connecticut, Puritan pas- 
 
SEMI-CENTENNI. 1 1.. 5 
 
 tor, Joseph Strong, J). I)., i 778-1834, preceded 
 by Benjamin Lord, I). I)., 171 7-1 784, who, 
 together filled out the long period of one 
 hundred and twenty years in the same pul- 
 pit. Naturally, it was beyond the wildest dream 
 of a lad of fourteen, that he would, after fifty- 
 four years, be the chosen mouth-piece of a similar 
 occasion. Half a century seemed a period bor- 
 dering on the patriarchal. Yet, the years have 
 glided away so swiftly and smoothly, that, to- 
 night, he stands before you, facing the verge of 
 the allotted three score years and ten, startled to 
 find himself so near the goal, but feeling, that, 
 if it were Heaven's will, he could, without re- 
 pining, live out another period of equal duration, 
 and, thoroughly convinced, from his own experi- 
 ence, that if Methuselah had been asked if he 
 could endure the world's wickedness for another 
 nine centuries, he would have answered unhesi- 
 tatingly that he had "no objection to trying." 
 
 In June, 1744, Mr. Wesley convened, in Lon- 
 don, his first ministerial "conference," the germ 
 of one of the numerous potential agencies of 
 ecclesiastical Methodism. These annual minis- 
 terial " conversations " have traveled over the 
 the world with Methodism, entered into all its 
 ramifications, and culminated, in 1881, in an 
 "ecumenical conference" at City Road chapel, 
 the first general pilgrimage to the shrine of the 
 venerated founder, not yet, however, whatever 
 may hap in the future, to canonize or deify him. 
 This harmless gathering threw some few con- 
 temporary church idolizers into spasms of mirth 
 
6 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 or throes of holy horror at the ridiculous or pro- 
 fane association of the sacred name, 'ecumeni- 
 cal," with a body that did not claim to be a synod 
 or council of clerics and bishops, but a simple 
 brotherly "conference" of laics and preachers. 
 
 The first American Annual Conference, held 
 in Philadelphia, in 1773, under the chairmanship 
 of Thomas Rankin, one of Mr. Wesley's assist- 
 ants, consisted, like Mr. Wesley's first conference, 
 of ten preachers, — all English, — and represented 
 a membership of 11 60 and a chain of circuits 
 along the Atlantic seaboard from New York to 
 Norfolk, in Virginia. In the ten years follow- 
 ing, notwithstanding the struggle between the 
 colonies and the mother country, a conference 
 session was held every year, the preachers in- 
 creased to 80, the circuits to 40, the membership 
 to 15,000. 
 
 At a called conference commencing with 
 Christmas, 1784, the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church of the United States of North 
 America was founded, superintendents were 
 elected and made presidents ex officio, for life. 
 At the end of the century, sixteen years later, 
 the new organization numbered 270 itinerants, 
 160 circuits, stretching from Bay Ouinte, in Can- 
 ada, to Augusta, Georgia, with a lay membership 
 of 60,000. 
 
 A single conference, meeting, by adjournment 
 or appointment, at widely separated points, to 
 accommodate preachers scattered over such 
 breadth of territory, was no longer possible. The 
 number of sessions had increased from three to 
 
SF.M J-CENTENNIAL. 7 
 
 twelve and twenty a year when the General Con- 
 ference of 1796 distributed the circuits among 
 six annual conferences, which became seven in 
 1800; nine in 1812; twelve in 1820. As the 
 work extended, new conferences were created by 
 annexing newly-settled territory, or by sub-di- 
 viding such of the older bodies as were found to 
 be too unwieldy or wide spread. By the General 
 Conference of 1832, the northern limb of the 
 New York Conference, which stretched from the 
 metropolitan city to the Canada line, something 
 over 300 miles, was severed from the parent stock, 
 named Troy, after one of its principal cities, and 
 made the twenty-second member of a family of 
 annual conferences, that now number 96, enrol 
 1 2,00c itinerants, 1,700,000 members and engir- 
 dle the globe. The Arminio-Wesleyan phase of 
 Christianity now aggregates between twenty and 
 thirty millions of adherents, a growth that has had 
 few parallels, notable as that of the American 
 nation itself. Success is not an infallible measure 
 of merit. Mere numbers are no test of worth, 
 otherwise we must award approval, divine and 
 human, to Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Mor- 
 monism, Spiritualism. 
 
 Methodism is not a mushroom growth. Its 
 doctrines are those of the universal church. Its 
 ground principles are as old as Christianity, as 
 lasting as the true interpretation of the Book of 
 God. It is no other than Christianity re-vitalized, 
 shaken free from dead works and unprofitable 
 traditions. It needs no apology or defence in 
 this connection The Troy Conference is sim- 
 
8 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 ply a sub-section of the grand body, set for the 
 propagation and maintenance of the christian 
 faith, opposition to wrong and sin, the promotion 
 of pure religion and right living. Territorially, 
 it included ten counties and parts of three other 
 counties in North-eastern New York, the 
 northern half of Berkshire county in Massachu- 
 setts, and that part of Vermont which lay west 
 of the Green mountains, since rent away, nay, 
 rather, wrenched away from the parent trunk by 
 the wretchedest empiricism ever known or heard 
 of in ecclesiastical surgery. 
 
 Pre-history of this lake, river, mountain and val 
 ley region is not needed here. In 1609, Anglo- 
 Dutch Hendrick Hudson, called at the south door 
 of the future conference, and French protestant 
 Champlain at the north, and each left his card, 
 to be read of all generations, the one in our chief 
 lake, the other in our principal river. French, 
 English and Indians, in their struggles for own- 
 ership, made this whole region historic battle- 
 ground, suggestive, at every turn, of defeat or 
 success, from burning Schenectady on the south, 
 to victorious Plattsburgh on the north, especially 
 reminding us of the shining fact that, within a 
 dozen miles of the Mecca of American Method- 
 ism (the Embury monument) was fought one of 
 the " fifteen decisive battles of the world," and a 
 victory gained which advanced universal freedom 
 and ranked Saratoga with Marathon, Arbela, 
 Hastings, Blenheim, and Waterloo. 
 
 The tide of emigration which, between the 
 French war and the Revolution, swept the Em- 
 
SEMJ-CENTENN/A L 9 
 
 bury family to the north, resumed its flow with the 
 return of peace, and the hardy pilots of Methodism 
 kept their rude, life-preserving craft upon the crest 
 of the advancing wave. Contemporaneously.with 
 the adoption of a Republican constitution in 
 place of a rickety confederation, Garrettson and 
 his heroic band found their way to the log set- 
 tlements of the occupants of the land-grants cov- 
 ering the counties bordering Champlain and the 
 upper Hudson. Cambridge, the home of pre- 
 revolutionary Methodism, fittingly became the 
 first post-revolutionary centre from which evan- 
 gelistic efforts pulsated throughout all that north- 
 ern region. Albany. Saratoga, Pittsfield, Yer- 
 gennes, Plattsburgh, successively became perma- 
 nent names in the ever-widening family of circuits. 
 The whole period, from the Revolution to the 
 close of the second war with Great Britain, was 
 experimental, a time of trial for the nation, a 
 new people, learning to live under new and hith- 
 erto untried conditions. Our new ecclesiastical 
 life, was, in like manner, experimental. We suc- 
 ceeded to no old, cut and dried mediaeval system, 
 The woods of the new world had no more affinity 
 for prayer-books, surplices and diocesan episco- 
 pacy than the nation had for sceptres and crowns, 
 orders of nobility and robes of state. The fathers 
 had to feel their way to order, consistency and 
 consolidation. Duties and modes were novel, 
 recruits raw, and life rough. It was in the midst 
 of migratory populations, sojourning in log cab- 
 ins, riding on horseback through blazed forest- 
 2 
 
io SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 paths, or over corduroy roads, and swimming 
 bridgeless streams that itinerant work commenced 
 in America. No other was possible. The coun- 
 try had to be cleared of forests, Indians, wolves, 
 bears, panthers, catamounts and rattlesnakes to 
 make way for the advent of civilization. 
 
 The Methodist itinerant rode in the van of 
 the never-ending procession of emigrant wagons 
 till they halted, perforce, on the shores of the 
 Pacific ocean. Forty years ago a favorite theme 
 with New England home missionary agents was 
 "the religious destitution of the great West." 
 " Only twenty ministers in all Illinois." True, only 
 twenty Congregational and twenty-five Episcopal, 
 but eight hundred Methodist, two hundred trav- 
 eling and six hundred local, in a population of 
 700,000! In 1803, Albany and Saratoga were 
 in the Philadelphia Conference. Quarter of a 
 century later there had grown out of this northern 
 soil four presiding elders' districts, numbering 44 
 charges, Sy preachers, and 16,200 lay members. 
 Distinguishing names were first given to the 
 Conferences in the Minutes of 1802. New York, 
 henceforward, alternated its sessions between the 
 northern and southern portions of its territory. 
 In the south it held seventeen out of twenty an- 
 nual sessions in New York city. In the north it 
 met twice (1803 and 1805) at Ashgrove. Albany 
 entertained the body twice and Troy five times. 
 Pittsfield, in Massachusetts, and Middlebury, in 
 Vermont, were favored with a single sight, each, 
 of a live bishop. 
 
 Of the 219 men in the hands of Elijah Hedding, 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. u 
 
 assisted by Robert R. Roberts, for distribution at 
 the Green street church, New York, 1832, Troy 
 Conference received 91, of whom 66 were elders, 
 23 probationers, and 2 superannuates. One-third 
 of the effective force was veteran, two having 
 commenced itinerant life with the century ; a 
 score more had fallen into the active ranks before 
 i8t>o, and ten had been members of General Con- 
 ference since it became a delegated body. The 
 heroic age of American Methodism was already 
 past — the age of peculiar labor and peculiar sac 
 rifice. The saddlebag dynasty was passing away. 
 The theological Anaks of those days were the 
 last graduates of " Brush College," the institu- 
 tion of which that eccentric polemic, Peter Cart- 
 wright, used to boast of being an alumnus. It was 
 the last of reading the Scriptures in the original 
 tongues, a la John P. Durbin, in log cabins, by the 
 light of pitch-pine knots ; the last of horseback 
 homiletical studies — bible, hymn-book and dis- 
 cipline being the only text-books ; the last of 
 portmanteau book-hawking ; the last of the plain 
 garb, straight coat, wide felt hat, and foretop re- 
 ligiously plastered clown over the forehead, after 
 the fashion of the puritan and shaker, a fashion 
 ridiculed endlessly by " Vanity Fair," in earlier 
 days, but the very top of the mode in that same 
 " Vanity Fair," now, the pride and glory of the 
 young misses of the ton, known, in the slang of 
 the hour as their ''beautifully beautiful bangs.' 
 In 1835, Wilbur Fisk wore to Europe the con 
 ventional, straight-waisted uniform which he 
 brought from the itinerancy to the college presi- 
 
I2 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 dential chair, and returned the following year, 
 after representing American Methodism at the 
 British Conference, dressed in the ordinary cos- 
 tume of the period. In 181 1, Tobias Spicer was 
 " discontinued " for presuming to marry while "on 
 trial." In those days the celibate system was in 
 full vogue. Of the 84 preachers constituting the 
 Virginia Conference only three were married. 
 In 1 816, a married man was, for the first time, 
 made bishop, and the celibate custom went by 
 the board, though there are not wanting instances 
 to suggest that while marriage is a good thing, 
 on the whole, for the itinerancy, occasional cases 
 of celibacy would do it no harm. 
 
 These were the days of the waning and final 
 extinction of the circuit system. In 1832, New 
 York city was divided into two circuits, east and 
 west, supplied by five preachers, each, who 
 preached in rotation ; six years later, the twelve 
 churches of the city had each its stationed 
 preacher. The new Troy Conference sent 88 
 preachers to 51 appointments ; twenty years later, 
 144 out of 169 were stationed, and there was 
 scarcely the ghost of an old time circuit in the 
 entire list of charges. 
 
 Men live who saw the last of conferences with 
 closed doors, an idea that would hugely amuse 
 a modern newspaper reporter, that ubiquitous 
 Robin Goodfellow, busy as fairy Puck, who 
 would 
 
 "put a girdle 'round the earth in forty minutes." 
 
 Said reporter would smile at the notion that 
 his prying pencil, potent as a housebreaker's 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL i 3 
 
 jimmy, could not force any door, burglarize, if 
 need were, the council chamber of heaven, and 
 beat ever\- competitor in placing- its secrets in 
 staring capitals before a generation of newspaper 
 gourmands who seem to regard scandal and gos- 
 sip as the choicest nutriment of mind and soul. 
 
 The old time quarterly love-feast tickets are 
 not yet quite forgotten ; though modern Metho- 
 dists luxuriate in express trains, palace cars and 
 through tickets. Their fathers rode on limited 
 passes, vised quarterly, and, in default of compli- 
 ance with the conditions of the road, were un- 
 ceremoniously put off the train by the conductor 
 or dropped at the way stations. 
 
 We remember the days, also, when each mem- 
 ber of conference had to leave the room while 
 his character, habits, methods, usefulness or use- 
 /^j-ness, were freely canvassed, and when, if these 
 were not satisfactory, some method was speedily 
 found for locating him, with his consent or with- 
 out. 
 
 There is not so much talk in conferences as 
 formerly. Even a spirited debate is a rarity. 
 The age inclines to telegraphic brevity, despatch, 
 directness. It was not so a generation or two 
 ago. Small matters elicited lively discussion 
 and every man had to have his say. 
 
 Twenty years ago there lingered among us a 
 brother who always sat in a front pew on the 
 conference floor, watched all the proceedings 
 with Argus eyes and commonly had something 
 to say on every point at issue. Full of the tra- 
 ditions and usages of the past and jealous for old 
 
I4 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 time precedents, he popped up twenty times 
 during a morning session with some inquiry, 
 some objection, some suggestion, pertinent or 
 non-pertinent, opportune or inopportune. Dur- 
 ing one of the last conferences he attended, I 
 dined one day with an intelligent Baptist lady, 
 who had never witnessed the proceedings of an 
 annual conference before and who was not, of 
 course, familiar with the terminology of Metho- 
 dist Minutes and Discipline, " effective," " super- 
 numerary," "superannuate," though she had 
 evidently heard of the latter. In all seriousness 
 she put to me the embarrassing question, !' who 
 was that old gentlenan who was so conspicuous 
 in the doings of this morning's session ? I think," 
 said she, " he is on what you call your Dotage 
 List." It is consoling to age and superannuation 
 to believe, though it may be only a shallow con- 
 ceit, that dotage, all of it, does not belong to 
 years, or the superannuate class. There are 
 occasional instances of it at the other end of the 
 line. Some are dotards at thirty, others vig- 
 orous at seventy. 
 
 The fathers did dote much and piously upon 
 their "peculiarities," — plain dress, plain churches, 
 free sittings, and the like. The present race of 
 Methodists concedes much to the general belief 
 of mankind that religion is an affair of conduct 
 and not of clothes, respects the heart and not 
 the hair, is independent of bodily ornaments — 
 flowers, silks, ribbons, steeples, pews, bells, or- 
 gans, choirs and many other things abominable 
 to the Puritan and old Methodist regime. De- 
 
SEMI-CEA TEA ,\ /.//. i 5 
 
 spite their singularities, incidental or cultivated, 
 trivial or positively objectionable, those stalwart 
 sons of the mountain slopes or lake and river 
 basins, did sturdy work and used every effort to 
 prove themselves worthy sons of the indefatiga- 
 ble Wesley, in the gospel. 
 
 Wesley, like Bonaparte, with a healthy body, 
 alert mind and wiry constitution, found that he 
 could do with six or seven hours sleep and make 
 up any little deficiencies in the saddle. Whole 
 generations of Methodist preachers attempted 
 suicide by trying to follow his example, irrespect- 
 ive of physiological or climatical conditions. If 
 Wesley had commenced his mission in mid-win- 
 ter, in the region of the St. Lawrence river, with 
 the mercury frozen solid in the bulb of the ther- 
 mometer, six feet of snow out doors, and green 
 wood for the fire-place within, it is safe to say 
 that four o'clock rising and five o'clock preaching 
 Methodists would have been as scarce as Baptists 
 in Greenland. 
 
 Our voluminous pioneer biography bristles 
 with incidents of labor, privation, danger and 
 suffering. The " hardships of the early itiner- 
 ants" is an ever-recurring theme. Nevertheless, 
 one point seems to be often overlooked, and that 
 is, that the hardships and sacrifices of the pioneer 
 peoples were as great as those of their spiritual 
 guides, that the best the people had, though it 
 were only corn bread, " hog and hominy" was 
 always at the service of the preacher. Ministers 
 of consolation, sons of thunder, weeping Jere- 
 miahs or wrathful denouncers of iniquity and sin, 
 
1 6 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 these heralds of the Cross flamed through the 
 land. If the incidents of their individual biog- 
 raphy and the characteristics of their individual 
 persons and ministry have never been written, 
 or have faded from recollection, the flavor of 
 their excellence and the traditions of their spirit 
 and modes influence our lives and guide our con- 
 ference delibrations to this day. 
 
 The Conference of 1832 was a live body. 
 What has become of these noble men ? The an- 
 swer to this question will remind us of the 
 changes wrought by time. Sordid souls, wor- 
 shipers of the present, imbued with slight rever- 
 ence for the past, and little influenced by esprit 
 du corps, will reply, "who cares?" "Let the 
 dead bury their dead." What has this rushing 
 age to do with the fossils and fogies and mum- 
 mied remains of two generations past? " A living 
 dog is better than a dead lion." The old look 
 backward, the young, forward, impersonations 
 of memory and hope. Frightful bores, these 
 Jonathan Old Bucks, with their Rip Van Winkle 
 stories about " old times," as if any " former 
 times were better than these ! " Another class, 
 more reverential, more inclined to sentiment, 
 history, tradition, will heed, with becoming 
 thoughtfulness, the solemn inquiry 
 
 " Your fathers where are they ? 
 And the prophets — do they live forever ?" 
 
 It is pertinent to the occasion to inquire what 
 has befallen the 91 men that constituted the 
 original Troy Conference ? The General Min- 
 utes answer this question, partially. Two-thirds 
 
SEMI-CENTENNL 1 1 . t 7 
 
 of them arc dead. Three-fourths of the young 
 men who were probationers in 1S32, are dead. 
 The figures composing the number 91 are re- 
 versed. Only 19 of the 91 are known to be 
 alive. Seven of these are in the Troy Confer- 
 ence, all superannuates, of from five to twenty 
 years' standing. Ten have disappeared from 
 view through the several doors of conference 
 exit. Eleven still live in other conferences, nine 
 on the retired list ; one only is effective."* 
 
 Into this ministerial close corporation have 
 been received, in the last fifty years, six hundred 
 and thirty men, of whom less than two hundred 
 and fifty compose the Troy Conference to-day. 
 Like everv thincr human, an annual conference 
 exhibits the ordinary phenomenon of out-go and 
 income, waste and supply. The lay member- 
 ship, including the 6,000 carried off by the un- 
 righteous severance of Western Vermont, despite 
 all drains by death, secessions and removals, is 
 twice what it was in 1832, while the ministry for 
 the same period has increased in triple ratio, 
 giving an effective minister to every 200 mem- 
 bers, or one in 1,000 to the Methodist popula- 
 tion. The tabulated history of the ministerial 
 conference is as follows : 
 
 Original Nucleus, - 91 
 
 Received on Probation, 511 
 
 Received by Transfers and other modes, - 119 
 
 Total Conference Corps, - - - 721 
 
 ♦Joseph Ayers, presiding cider of Bellefontaine District, Central Ohio, fifty- 
 two years in the itinerant tic-Id. 
 
iS SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 PER CONTRA. 
 
 Deceased, ------- 184 
 
 Living in Sister Conferences, - - - no 
 
 Discontinued after brief trial, - - - 80 
 
 Located permanently, - 61 
 
 Withdrawn from the connection, - - - 28 
 
 Expelled for various causes, ... u 
 
 Members of the Conference to-day, - - 247 
 
 Total, - - - - - - 721 
 
 The Conference has also 118 local preachers, 
 once a useful order, but now chiefly the " vesti- 
 bule or the Botany Bay" of the Annual Confer- 
 ences. 
 
 The Troy Conference may be fitly character- 
 ized as rural, its two commercial capitals, Albany 
 and Troy, being about mid-way in rank with the 
 first fifty cities of the Republic, classed accord- 
 ing to population, yet it is among the foremost 
 in clerical force, lay membership, Sunday School 
 work and benevolent contributions. About one- 
 fourth of the Conferences of the connection 
 report church property of a million dollars and 
 upwards in value. Troy stands eighth in this 
 list, with the same grade of church debt. It 
 ranks as tenth or eleventh in ministerial support, 
 fifteenth in superannuate collections, several 
 grades below what it ought to be in view of the 
 fact that in the number of superannuates and 
 supernumeraries it is the banner Conference of 
 the connection ! Its corps of preachers and re- 
 serves lacks only five of being equal to the whole 
 effective force of the original body ! 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. i 9 
 
 The Conference has always taken lively in- 
 terest in education and has experienced its full 
 share of the customary failures of popular effort 
 in that direction.* It may felicitate itself upon 
 its steady recognition of the grand reforms of 
 the century; its war record; its rank and work 
 in the quadrennial Conferences; its occasional 
 contributions to the literature of the church ;f 
 its honor in counting in its membership two men 
 on their way to the bishopric, % and another, 
 equally distinguished, en route {or the editorship 
 of the Quarterly Review,^ its present honor in 
 the chairmanship of the Book Committee, | the 
 embodied General Conference in the interval 
 between sessions. 
 
 No less than sixty self-denying presbyters of 
 grave character and years have, from time to 
 time, consented to serve the Conference as dioce- 
 san overseers by episcopal grace or popular nomi- 
 nation, personally grateful, no doubt, for the op- 
 portunity afforded for self-sacrifice and practising 
 itinerancy in primitive style and on first prin- 
 ciples, with entirely subordinate reference to the 
 fact of its being a tolerably fair passport to the 
 general councils of the tribe and a seat among 
 its chief sachems, since it has happened that 
 of the fifty men who have represented the min- 
 isterial body in General Conference, one-half 
 have been presiding elders ! Nevertheless, these 
 
 *In this year of grace, 1882, it patronizes two institutions, Troy Conference 
 Academy, Chas. H. Dunton. Principal, and Fort Edward, N. Y., Institute, Jos. 
 E, Kintf, President. 
 
 tNotably. F. G. Hibbard and D. D. Whedon, Commentaries. 
 *John Alley and Jesse T. Peck. 
 ^Daniel D. Whedon. 
 lh uner Eaton. 
 
2o SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 cabineteers have all been able, hard-working 
 men, and the office though of less use than for- 
 merly, no sinecure. 
 
 For forty years local Minutes have been 
 printed, a convenient Year Book, suited to an 
 age when every interest, sacred and secular, from 
 a tooth powder to a sewing machine, from a col- 
 lege society to a presiding elder's district, is pro- 
 moted by some form of published periodical. 
 
 The attitude of the Conference toward the 
 special questions that have agitated the church 
 and nation from time to time has partaken both 
 of the conservative and the progressive. 
 
 In 1844, the body voted overwhelmingly to let 
 the South go and take with her an equitable 
 share of church property according to the " Plan 
 of Separation." The vote of the border Con- 
 ferences turned the scale and converted the pro- 
 posed peaceful division into rebellion and seces- 
 sion. On lay delegation the laity of the Con- 
 ference voted for, while the clerical body voted 
 against, the mild infusion of it that was pro- 
 posed for our church councils in a spirit suffi- 
 ciently fogeyish to suit its sternest official oppo- 
 nent, the late Edward R. Ames. 
 
 The body has had, from the beginning, stal- 
 wart preachers and herculean laborers. Its work 
 has been mainly domestic, the motion of its in- 
 conspicuous spheres regular and orbital. An 
 occasional comet has flashed athwart the sys- 
 tem, engendering the usual apprehension caused 
 by these erratics, distinguished from fixed stars 
 by a thin, misty, transparent nucleus in the way 
 
SEMI-CENTENNJA L. 21 
 
 of head and millions of leagues of nebulous 
 spread in the rear. 
 
 Sunflower aesthetics in the line of oratory, 
 music, poetry, have not been over-abundant in 
 these rustic regions. Watts, the Wesleys and 
 the Medievalists have rendered it well nigh im- 
 possible for any modern to add any thing to the 
 world's stock of genuine hymns. It is a curious 
 fact, highly illustrative of the power of culture, 
 that the Church of England, whose fixed ritual 
 allows slender provision for hymn singing, 
 should, nevertheless, have been most prolific in 
 hymn writers. Ten Episcopal hymnists find 
 place in the new hymnal, but a Methodist hymn 
 writer worth the name would be a lusus natures ! 
 
 Taste for nature and art is no longer piously 
 suppressed. In 1850, when Jenny Lind was 
 entrancing New York with her divine songs, I 
 asked Father Lane, old time book agent, if he 
 had followed the multitude and visited the scene 
 of her triumphs, Trippler Hall. He thanked 
 God that he had "seen neither the inside of it 
 nor the outside." One of our superintendents 
 is said to have passed Niagara Falls seven times 
 on his episcopal tours without diverging from 
 his direct course to see a revelation of God that 
 hundreds have crossed the ocean to reverence ! 
 
 This age has little of the Quaker prejudice of 
 the one or the Spartan devotion to duty of the 
 other. It has studied Burke on the Sublime 
 and Beautiful, looked into Hogarth's Analysis 
 of Beauty, read Matthew Arnold and Principal 
 Shairp on Culture, and listened to Oscar Wilde. 
 
22 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 While it has no leanings toward church mil- 
 linery, and abhors artificial flowers like the door- 
 keeper of an old-time love feast, it has no objec- 
 tion to a genuine horticultural display, provided 
 it be not of that extravagant magnitude that 
 makes it equally improvident for the impecuni- 
 ous to marry or die. Beauty is a relative word. 
 Fashion renders the intrinsically ugly beautiful. 
 The dress and manners of the fathers were beau- 
 tiful in their time — unspeakably ugly to us. 
 They could not help becoming obsolete. 
 
 It is equally absurd to petrify fashions, and to 
 endeavor to force the creeds and rituals of one 
 generation upon generations following. What 
 is exactly fitted to one age of the world is totally 
 out of joint with another. Cardinal truths, 
 laws, general principles, fit all times ; details, 
 special rules, dispensations change as men 
 change. Rome's Latin ritual is a body of death. 
 It was a live medium when it began to be used, 
 the language of the masses. In the run of the 
 centuries one word after another died on the 
 tongue of the priest till all was corpse in his 
 altar ministrations. The fashions in dress and 
 beliefs to-day, in a century will be as ridiculous 
 as the ugly head-dresses of the Roman sister- 
 hoods. All healthy growth is a process of death 
 as well as a process of life. All healthy organ- 
 isms are actively engaged in sloughing off the 
 dead and replacing the old and defunct with that 
 which is new, vigorous, life sustaining and life 
 creating. Ecclesiastical organizations are no 
 exception to this law. Rules, regulations, ordi- 
 
SEMI-CEXTRXXIAL. 
 
 23 
 
 nances, questions and catechisings become obso- 
 lete, and books of creed and discipline dead 
 letter. The indefinite multiplication of ques- 
 tions for the conduct of quarterly and annual 
 Conferences will not infuse life into that out of 
 which the life and spirit have once departed. It is 
 a question of vital importance to Methodists and 
 General Conferences how many and what of the 
 prudentials of the last century are fitted to this ! 
 We live in a new world, if not in " a new 
 heaven," at least a " new earth." 
 
 The era of the organization of the Troy Con- 
 ference was one of the world's transition periods. 
 Forces were being developed that affected, un- 
 precedently, the physical, civil, social and religi- 
 ous welfare of mankind. Every passing century 
 has a grandeur of its own. Every part of God's 
 creation manifests a variety that scorns repeti- 
 tions and tends to the infinite. The great law 
 of averages and compensations distributes ad- 
 vantages among the centuries. Each has its 
 own revelations and inspirations, each, its full 
 share of the wondrous and the useful. The 
 fragment of the 19th century now under review 
 has been especially prolific in physical and social 
 wonders. What were some of the thoughts and 
 doings that busied the brains and hands of men 
 in 1832 ? 
 
 Morse, on a return voyage from Europe, was 
 studying out methods of applying the electro- 
 magnetic currents (discovered by Oersted in 
 18 19) to the transmission of thought ; and de- 
 veloping, step by step, that wonderful system 
 
24 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 which now clothes the globe with thought 
 nerves, and enables antipodal hemispheres to 
 converse with each other. Stephenson had set 
 the whole capital world into a ferment of stock 
 company enterprise by demonstrating in 1830, 
 on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, the 
 feasibility and advantages of locomotion by 
 steam. In May, 1832, I rode on the rude cars 
 (coach bodies on trucks) that began that season 
 to make regular trips between Albany and 
 Schenectady, going about seven miles an hour, 
 the rude foreshadowing of that mighty system 
 of travel and transportation now familiar to all 
 lands. In 1832, Daguerre was prosecuting in- 
 itial experiments in photography ; Goodyear 
 was trying to vulcanize india rubber ; Harnden 
 was meditating the express system ; omnibuses, 
 invented in France, were taking the place of 
 hackney coaches in the cities ; gas was working 
 its way into general favor, displacing tallow 
 candles and oil lamps ; friction matches were 
 supplanting the old flint and steel and tinder- 
 box ; cook stoves were succeeding the old time 
 fireplace, with its array of bellows, andirons, 
 shovel and tongs, cranes, bake kettles and long- 
 handled frying pans ; chimney sweeps armed 
 with broom and scraper, and merry song were 
 giving way to bootblacks, and greasy black-ball 
 to box and liquid blacking. The immense 
 anthracite stove business was entering with its 
 numberless inventions, patterns and adaptations, 
 employing, like almost every other branch of 
 modern invention, armies of workmen and mil- 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 2$ 
 
 lions of capital. Since then, over ocean steam 
 navigation and under ocean telegraphy, over 
 continent railroads, electric lights and telegraphy 
 have succeeded each other in a rapid whirl of 
 evolution. Stephenson and Morse had to fight 
 their marvelous creations — the two most marvel- 
 ous of the century — into use in the face of op- 
 posing parliaments, and congresses, and popu- 
 lar prejudices of every description. Now, mirac- 
 ulous revelations in mechanism follow each other 
 so rapidly as scarcely to raise a ripple of excite- 
 ment beyond a nine days' wonder, when the 
 novelty is put to some practical purpose and 
 treated, after a few months, as though mankind 
 had known its properties and uses for centuries. 
 I have no need to remind you of the revolu- 
 tionizing influence of steam, railroads, telegraphs 
 and the world of modern inventions upon the 
 sublime science of human butchery. The wars 
 of the century have shared the mighty impulse. 
 They have been distinguished for gigantic prepa- 
 ration, brevity, and we are pleased to add, for 
 humanitarian tendencies. The venerable frown- 
 ing portals of Chinese exclusiveness have been 
 battered from their rusty hinges by British can 
 non and an effort made, unsuccessful we hope, to 
 set them up again at the Golden Gate of the 
 harbor of San Francisco. Germany and Italy 
 have been unified, France, once imperialized, 
 twice republicanized ; slavery abolished by the 
 madness of its own defenders ; the American 
 Union more firmly than ever nationalized. 
 
 4 
 
2 6 SEMI-CRN TENNTA I. . 
 
 This was the era also of wonderful moral and 
 social movements. In 1832, at a meeting in 
 Preston, England, the total abstinence pledge 
 was introduced and the society called teetotal. 
 In 1832, the celebrated ethical teacher, Way- 
 land, asked the significant question, "Is it right 
 to get a living by selling poison and propagating 
 plague and leprosy all around you?" In 1832, 
 Melville B. Cox, appeared at the General Con- 
 ference in Philadelphia and gave the first life 
 thrills to foreign missionary work by offering 
 himself, with a broken body and a fiery soul, for 
 Africa. His dying prayer for the continent of 
 his adoption has been answered at the head 
 waters of the Nile and Congo in the labors, dis- 
 coveries and missionary endeavors made and 
 prompted by the noble Scotchman, whose re- 
 mains in 1873 w ^re honored with a resting place 
 in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 In 1832, the Oregon Flatheads appeared at 
 St. Louis, inquiring after the white man's bible 
 and the white man's God, creating a mission 
 which proved to be the first stone in the founda- 
 tion of the empire of the Pacific. In 1832, 
 South Carolina passed Calhoun's celebrated 
 nullification act, antagonized the next year by 
 the American Anti-Slavery Society, disbanded 
 in 1870, perhaps the only instance in history 
 where a voluntary association did not find some 
 excuse for continuing to exist after its special 
 mission had been accomplished. In 1832, Joseph 
 Smith and Sidney Rigdon were building the first 
 Mormon temple at Kirtland, Ohio, and setting 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 in motion a system whose blasphemies and 
 abominations have never been equaled in any 
 heathenism, ancient or modern. 
 
 Millerism and Tractarianism were both gret- 
 ting under way, the one to land in annihilation- 
 ism, or soul sleep, the other to pave a broad 
 highway from Anglicism to Rome. 
 
 Horace Greeley, a journeyman printer in the 
 metropolitan city, was trying initial experiments 
 with a penny daily, destined, within ten years, 
 to blossom out into one of the most gigantic of 
 modern enterprises. That Mephistopheles of 
 journals, the New York Herald, was founded in 
 1833. The application of steam to rotary, 
 cylinder and power presses has so enlarged and 
 multiplied the publishing interests of the world 
 that they count their gains by millions and their 
 productions by myriads ! 
 
 In 1832, a man who was worth $20,000 was 
 considered rich — in 1882, the great New York 
 stock operator, Jay Gould, displays $53,000,000 
 vested in a brace of railroads and one telegraph 
 line to amuse an idle hour with a circle of 
 friends. The bloated wealth of the age, grow- 
 ing out of improved physical conditions, is shown 
 in the tax list of New York city, where thirty 
 corporations are assessed on from one million 
 to nine and a half millions ; ten estates belong- 
 ing to heirs, and twenty private individuals are 
 assessed from one million to five millions each, 
 and this only represents a fraction of their ac- 
 tual wealth. These fortunes, royal in propor- 
 tions, are so common as scarcely to attract re- 
 
2 S SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 mark in this age of wholesale. Rome had 
 colossal individual fortunes. They represented 
 the fruits of provincial plunder and conquest. 
 England has had gigantic fortunes, the gifts of 
 chartered monopolies, or the yield of oppression 
 and extortion in dependencies and distant trade 
 marts. 
 
 While some of the fortunes of the day are the 
 fruits of gambling speculation, over-reaching, op- 
 pression and rascality, a goodly number of them 
 are the legitimate outcome of business profits, 
 investments, earnings of labor, rise in the values 
 of stocks and real estate. 
 
 Men have learned that wholesale investments 
 yield wholesale profits. One of the discoveries 
 of this age of discoveries is pitt money into an 
 enterprise if you want to get money out. It is 
 this lavish, almost unlimited expenditure, that 
 has made the modern press such a source of 
 wealth to proprietors. Thirty years ago Har- 
 per's Magazine was commencing existence as a 
 doubtful experiment. Fifty thousand dollars a 
 year in literary and artistic matter, editorial 
 ability and mechanical execution have been a 
 magnificent investment. Its secular rivals, Scrib- 
 ners and the Atlantic for instance, expend as 
 much per month as some deceased church mag- 
 azines we wot of expended per year ! While 
 the agriculture, the commerce and manufactures 
 of the age are all at wholesale, carried on on a 
 gigantic scale, the church still conducts her en- 
 terprises on a retail basis. It is true that the 
 doings of modern benevolent boards would 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 2 g 
 
 shame the humble beginnings of their origina- 
 tors, and that these enterprises have; shared, 
 measurably, the powerful impetus of the spirit 
 of the age. The sight of the million dollar pub- 
 lishing house at 805 Broadway, would make 
 honest John Dickins exclaim with wonder that 
 in ninety years his modest capital of S600, had 
 waxed to a million. Sixty years ago, in 1821, 
 the Methodist Missionary Society, just set in 
 motion, reported $800 collections for the first 
 year, an average of barely, three mills per mem- 
 ber ; last year, 1881, the affiliated missionary 
 benevolences of the church aggregated over 
 §800,000, an average of fifty cents per member. 
 
 Contributions have increased a thousand fold 
 in two generations, but are not yet half what they 
 should be in proportion to the enormous wealth 
 of the church, or in comparison with the offer- 
 ings of other denominations, or even of con- 
 verted heathen. The ecclesiastical benevolences 
 of the age form a striking contrast to the mam- 
 moth gains of the age. The means are ridicu- 
 lously inadequate to the magnitude of the work 
 proposed. The fifty missionary societies of the 
 world raise only about 87,000,000 all told, the 
 amount that New York city pays annually for 
 amusements. Eighteen centuries ago (it might 
 shame us to remember) India sent three thous- 
 and Buddhist missionaries to China to propa- 
 gate, by preaching and tracts, the tenets of 
 Gautama. 
 
 Forty years ago, P^euerbach, the great German 
 atheist, insisted vigorously on the incompati- 
 
jo SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 bility of Christianity with the times upon which 
 we have fallen. " Christianity," he says, " has 
 long vanished, not only from the reason, but 
 from the life of mankind ; it is nothing more 
 than a fixed idea, in flagrant contradiction with 
 our fire and life assurance companies, our rail- 
 roads and steam carriages, our picture and 
 sculpture galleries, our military and industrial 
 schools, our lecture theatres and scientific mu- 
 seums." 
 
 It is our opinion that Christianity will yet 
 vindicate its right to live in the enlistment of all 
 the newly discovered powers of the 19th century, 
 for its furtherance and propagation. Hope and 
 fear and sympathy are undying. Reverence 
 will always seek an object and that object will 
 not be the god that Feuerbach worships — Man. 
 Slowly, but surely, the church of God is utilizing 
 all the potencies of the times. The gospel flies 
 on the wings of steam to the most distant lands ; 
 bibles are printed and circulated by steam ; steam 
 presses annually shower abroad millions of pages 
 of Christian literature. Through the telegraphic 
 currents the heart of the hitherto lonely mis- 
 sionary now throbs in daily and hourly sympathy 
 with the great heart of the church at home. 
 
 In this age of social and physical changes, 
 nothing has been more remarkable than the de- 
 cline in theological controversy that has taken 
 place within the last generation. Our imme- 
 diate predecessors belonged emphatically to the 
 church militant. They were armed at all times 
 cap-a-pie for war, offensive and defensive, on 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 31 
 
 Calvanism, exclusive communion, and " isms" of 
 every kind. Methodism was contemned and 
 despised by all. In 1832, the distinguished 
 William B. Sprague, of Albany, published a vol- 
 ume of revival lectures supplemented by twenty 
 letters from the most distinguished divines of the 
 century, college professors, princes in the vari- 
 ous denominations, Wayland, Baptist ; Alex- 
 ander, Presbyterian ; Mcllvaine, Episcopal ; who 
 all gave their ideas on revivals, with many a 
 warning against "excitement," "cant," "enthu- 
 siasm," "exaggeration," "clap-trap," and much 
 praise of " genuine revival," " not spurious," but, 
 never a letter or a word from a Methodist, the 
 representative of the revival church par excel- 
 lence of the century. 
 
 What has wrought the remarkable change in 
 the attitude of Christian denominations toward 
 each other ? Common schools have been a 
 unifier; the combined hostility of infidels, Jews 
 and papists to the school system has unified 
 protestants ; Sunday schools have been a po- 
 tential unifying factor ; young men's Christian 
 associations have leveled the barriers of creed ; 
 missionaries have not dared to hoist hostile ban- 
 ners in the presence of a common foe on the 
 shores of heathenism ; temperance, anti-slavery, 
 and other benevolences have drawn Christians 
 together. Polemics have disappeared in the 
 face of actual war, bloodshed and conflict. All 
 classes feel the change. Even Roman Catholic 
 orators no longer call us " infidels " and " her- 
 tics," but speak of us as " separated brethren." 
 
32 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 A reminiscence of the Conference of 1832 is 
 relevant. It was the year of the advent and 
 destructive ravages of the Asiatic cholera, and 
 we well remember the terror that its dreaded 
 approach inspired. In mid-June the news broke 
 upon the startled conference that the world- 
 scourge had reached Whitehall from Canada, 
 and was on its way to the city. The Rev. Mr. 
 Schermerhorn, a delegate from the general asso- 
 ciation of the churches in New York, came to 
 make a statement to the conference that the 
 plague was close at hand, and to suggest that a 
 delegation from the Methodists meet one from the 
 other Churches to consider what shouldbedone in 
 the premises. Nathan Bangs and Samuel Mer- 
 win were made a committee, and a day of com- 
 mon fasting and prayer was appointed. What 
 was the parent of this then unwonted courtesy ? 
 was it fright ? or faith in Methodist prayers ! 
 Will the near future bring further and closer 
 unification of christians, or the contrary ; will 
 coming years witness further disintegrations and 
 subdivisions, or will they hail grander efforts to 
 consolidate and integrate? Why should not all 
 the denominational missionary societies of the 
 country be placed under one common grand 
 management like the American Bible Society ? 
 What but pride and ambition hinders federal 
 union between northern and southern Metho- 
 dists ? It is objected that a resulting constitu- 
 ency of 20,000 ministers and 3,000,000 members 
 would, ratioed as now, make General Conference 
 unwieldy. Certainly ; but why does a church of 
 
SEMI- CEN TENNIA L . 
 
 33 
 
 3,000,000 need a legislative assembly as large as 
 that of the United States which represents 
 50,000,000 ? What need of anything more than a 
 senate of bishops, and a representative assembly 
 of one minister and one layman from each annual 
 conference? Shade of William H. Perrine tell 
 us why ! 
 
 Brethren of the Troy Conference : Three- 
 fourths of you are young men, men in the prime 
 of life, all of whom have united with the body 
 within the last twenty-five years. Of the re- 
 maining one-fourth two-thirds are out of the ac- 
 tive field. There comes a time when God and 
 the church call a man out of the work as surely 
 as they originally called him into it. The vig- 
 orous manhood of some of you will carry you 
 far into the next century, and what a host of 
 silent social changes will not you and the com- 
 ing half century witness ? The passional preach- 
 ing and exhortation of the past have given place 
 to the intellectual. The occupants of the school 
 house bench, rough out-door plank, or free seat 
 in a plain free church were wont to say to the oc- 
 casional circuiteer " move us !" The elegant 
 cushioned pews of to-day say to the salaried 
 graduate of college and theological seminary 
 " instruct us," "entertain us." In another fifty 
 years the aesthetic may have displaced, entirely, 
 the emotional and intellectual. Imposing 
 ritual may have usurped the place of gospel 
 preaching altogether, and Methodism, if pro- 
 testant at all, may be of a piece with that High 
 5 
 
34 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 style that has been characterized as the " vario- 
 loid of Romanism." 
 
 What the church edifices of 1932 will be may 
 be judged from what has been. Troy, in 1809, 
 was a village of 3,500 inhabitants. A handful 
 of Methodists, about 130, built, without being 
 able to finish, a small white wooden church in 
 the outskirts of the village, on the shores of a 
 duck pond, at a cost of six or eight hundred dol- 
 lars. Eighteen years afterward, the society, num- 
 bering 430, still undivided, erected a brick edi- 
 fice costing $7,000, then one of the finest churches 
 outside of New York city. 
 
 Forty-four years later ( 1 8 7 1 ) after ten churches 
 had been carved out of the original society, 350 
 members remained to build an elegant stone edi- 
 fice at a cost of'$ 1 00,000. From wood to brick 
 the'increase was ten-fold, from brick to stone, 
 twelve to fifteen fold. If wealth rolls up for the 
 half -century to come as it has during the last 
 fiftyjyears,)State street can easily improve twenty 
 fold on the last outlay, which will imply an arch- 
 itectural investment of two millions of dollars ! 
 a vision of 1932, which makes us tremble for the 
 bones of Embury. In 1832, John N. M afrit 
 placed an epitaph over them which promised 
 that Ash Grove should be their " last resting 
 place." How like sarcasm this will sound when 
 the relics of this new St. Philip shall be the gold- 
 enshrined attraction of a hundred Methodist 
 Cathedrals between this and the Pacific Ocean ! 
 
 The preacher of the Troy Conference of to- 
 day has a vastly more complex and extended 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 35 
 
 •routine of duties than his predecessor of fifty 
 years ago. The old-time, hard-riding itinerant 
 preached three times on Sunday to different con- 
 gregations, and every day in the week, to widely 
 scattered populations, exercising but little pas- 
 toral supervision, and that little through the class 
 leaders. The incumbent of to-day is pastor as 
 well as preacher, combining, in theory, evangel- 
 istic labor with the pastoral. The class leader 
 pastorate went out of existence when the circuit 
 system went out. In proportion as a work is 
 evangelistic it fails signally to be pastoral. 
 The itinerancy has reduced itself to a limited 
 pastorate. With people and preachers clamor- 
 ing to have that limitation extended or taken off 
 altogether, how long before the present system 
 of annual and triennial changes will follow the 
 class and circuit systems ! 
 
 The loss to primitive Methodism, Method- 
 ism pure and simple, in the abrogation of the 
 circuit system was incalculable. Methodism at 
 once lost its evangelistic character. It congre- 
 gationalized the churches, it destroyed the com- 
 munity idea. It became, ever)' man, every 
 church, for self. Preachers and people no 
 longer worked, as bees work, in clusters, for the 
 good of the hive. The limited pastorate, Meth- 
 odistically considered, proved a poor substitute 
 for the circuit system. If Wesley were to re- 
 turn to earth and resume control, he would break 
 up the pastoral and restore the evangelistic. 
 11 The preachers," said Asbury, in substance, 
 'all want to get into the cities and stay there. I 
 
3 6 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 will show them how to get into the country." 
 When stationed in New York he circuited all 
 about on Long Island, in New Jersey and up 
 the Hudson wherever he could find hearers. He 
 got the General Conference of 1804 to pass the 
 two year rule of limitation to get some " star 
 preacher " out of Albany, who was disposed to 
 stick to the city indefinitely. Individual churches 
 may flourish, but it is at the expense of desti- 
 tute districts in cities, and neglected neighbor- 
 hoods in the country. To build up a single 
 interest, the temporary pastor excuses himself 
 from all others. It is impossible to do two 
 things at the same time, and do both well. The 
 effort to work the evangelistic and limited pas- 
 toral side by side has not been a distinguished 
 success ; something like trying to ride two horses 
 at once, or to trundle two wheelbarrows by the 
 same hand. 
 
 The class-pastorate was a superb idea, and 
 worked well on a small scale, but like a thou- 
 sand inventions buried in the Patent Office, 
 which worked beautifully in model, it failed to 
 operate successfully on a grand scale. The 
 death of classes has been the want of leaders, 
 and frightful dearth of material to make leaders 
 of. A clerical pastorate was inevitable, but an 
 itinerant pastorate is a contradiction in terms. 
 It fails to supply the great human hunger for 
 permanent leadership. The problem of the hour 
 is can the time limit be extended or removed 
 without destroying the connectional bond, and 
 bringing in sheer selfish independency ? 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 37 
 
 The calls upon the time and attention of the 
 modern preacher are endless in number and va- 
 riety, and perplexingly modified by the changed 
 habits of society. He finds the last century di- 
 rections of the discipline conflicting with the 
 business modes of the day, work hours, school 
 hours, meal hours, social calling- customs, the 
 seclusion and inaccessibility of households, the 
 season of the year, winter holiday recreations 
 and summer, wood and sea-side, vacations. The 
 leader or preacher who would catch his members 
 now must intercept them on the run. In addi- 
 tion to preaching and Sunday and week-day 
 evening services, the modern minister must look 
 after a great number of financial interests. Fifty 
 years ago only one of fifteen questions proposed 
 at Conference was statistical, the report of "num- 
 ber in society." Now, the general minutes pre- 
 sent, in appalling array, forty solid columns of 
 figures, two-thirds of which the preacher is ex- 
 pected to supply at the point of the bayonet, as, 
 next to preaching, the most vital element of his 
 ministerial vocation. 
 
 Exacting societies, pressed by debt, suffering 
 from slovenly or incapable management, or stim- 
 ulated by ambitious rivalry with prosperous 
 neighbors, demand of the appointing power the 
 best talent in the conference for their ministerial 
 supply. 
 
 For S800 a year, half the wages of a head me- 
 chanic, they want financial ability like Jay 
 Gould's ; learning like Adam Clarke's ; eloquence 
 like Whitefield's ; piety like John Fletcher's; a 
 
3 8 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 young man with the wisdom of a veteran ; one 
 who will be always in his study, and yet always 
 on the street, " visiting from house to house," 
 who will lead class like Carvosso ; interpret bible 
 like Miss Smiley ; be aVincent in Sunday School, 
 an Ives or Kimbal on church debt ; sing in pray- 
 er meetings like Philip Phillips or Chaplain Mc- 
 Cabe, and compete successfully in revival work 
 with evangelist Harrison, or a national camp 
 meeting. 
 
 It is a fair picture of the times to say, that he 
 will be lucky, if some inland charge does not 
 press him to personate Daniel in the lion's den 
 in an operatic cantata, got up to buy books for 
 the Sunday School library ; or if the Ladies' 
 Aid Society, on whom a magnanimous board of 
 masculine officials has thrown the brunt of the 
 church finances, does not set him at a fair or 
 festival to dishing sloppy ice cream at fifteen 
 cents the small plate, or to ladling out oyster 
 soup at fifty cents a stew, in which two lean and 
 lonesome bivalves float in a pint of lukewarm 
 water, tinged with milk ! ! 
 
 What will the Troy Conference of 1932 be? 
 Lift for a moment the curtain that hides futurity. 
 The physical features of this romantic region 
 will remain the same. Mansfield, king of the 
 Green Mountain range, will nod across lovely 
 Champlain to Marcy, monarch of the Adiron- 
 dack group. The lakelets of the north woods 
 will send their cool and pellucid stores to form the 
 incipient Hudson, to be swelled as it rolls, now 
 in smooth reaches and now in tumbling falls and 
 
SEMI-i 7:.\ TENNIAL. 39 
 
 foaming cataracts by the Schroon, the Sacandaga, 
 
 the Kills and the broad Mohawk, till it becomes 
 an arm of the sea, and proudly bears the com- 
 merce of the nations. Holy Horicon, island 
 gemmed, and Saratoga with its sparkling, world- 
 famed fountains, will be thronged as now with 
 health seekers and summer loiterers. 
 
 But what shall be the changes wrought in so- 
 cial life by human invention and divine revela- 
 tion ? No man dare prophesy. Grand as have 
 been the achievements of the century, it is con- 
 ceivable that those of the future will be grander. 
 It is humbling to vanity to reflect that the proud 
 locomotives, elegant palace cars, saloon steam- 
 ers, beautiful and efficient fire engines, magnifi- 
 cent variety of manufacturing and farming ap- 
 paratus, convenient gas, kerosene, telegraph, 
 telephone and electric illuminators will be just 
 as antiquated and laughable to the Trojans of 
 1932, as the lumbering vehicles, rude imple- 
 ments, sanded floors, hand looms, tallow candles, 
 tin sconces, foot stoves and warming pans of our 
 immediate ancestors are to us to-day. 
 
 Slow and old fogy shall we seem to gener- 
 ations that ride on noiseless trains with the ve- 
 locity of storm-winds ; that navigate oceans in 
 submarine crafts below the realm of tempests 
 and out of the reach of surface agitations ; that 
 fly through the air on the wings of steam ; that 
 dispel night-darkness and pale the moon with 
 electric suns ; that may put wool and silk and 
 cotton into one end of a machine and turn out 
 ready-made suits, and printed books at the other, 
 
40 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 when bicycles shall out-speed horses ; and when 
 telegraphic and telephonic communication shall 
 put distant states and people in contact, anti- 
 quate slow-paced postal service, and even render 
 attendance upon the sanctuary to listen to ser- 
 mons unnecessary. Millennial indeed will be 
 the condition of the world, if its social and re- 
 ligious development keeps pace with the wide 
 promise of the physical. What posterity will 
 think of our dress, our speech, our inventions, 
 our social and religious modes, is of less conse- 
 quence to us than what they will think and say 
 about our work, our objects, character and aims. 
 Shall we appear, to them, as heroic as the 
 itinerant fathers appear to us ? Shall we, like 
 them, immortalize the John Brown heroism 
 that is born of self-sacrifice, conflict, victory ? 
 We have discovered most happily that it is ig- 
 nobly fratricidal to war on our fellow christians, 
 that it is a Don Quixote battle with wine skins 
 to slash madly at theologico-metaphysical ab- 
 stractions. Our enemies are concrete. The 
 offspring of the times. Wholesale production 
 has generated wholesale vices. It is not a single 
 commandment that is here and there, infringed, 
 but a grand railroad smash-up of all the tables 
 of the law. Respect for God and man are old- 
 time superstitions. The restful Sabbath is con- 
 verted into a day of laborious revelry or stupefy- 
 ing dissipation. Marriage is lightly set aside by 
 divorces. Robbery is no longer the taking of 
 purses on the highway, but the stock operation 
 that swindles banks and cities and individuals 
 
SE . \n-CENTENNlA 1 . 4I 
 
 to the tune of hundreds of thousands and mil- 
 lions. Politicians and legislatures are often a 
 bye-word and a hissing. Partisanship swallows 
 up patriotism. Bribery is systematized. 
 
 The enemies we have to contend with are the 
 concreted vices of the times. The labor ques- 
 tion, the monopoly question, the war of the 
 white race upon the dark ; of the Southerns, par- 
 ticularly of uneasy South Carolina, upon the 
 blacks ; of demented California upon the yellow ; 
 of vacillating politicians on both, these are the 
 open problems in christian ethics to-day. The 
 christian minister's business is to save, both the 
 sinned against and the sinners. The preacher's 
 first and highest mission is, not the sanctifica- 
 tion of saved saints, but the salvation of unsav- 
 ed sinners. If a steamer blows up at a wharf, 
 and hundreds are struggling for life in the river, 
 the first object of every philanthropist will be to 
 save as many from immediate destruction as pos- 
 sible. Furnishing dry clothes and clean suits 
 will be an after thought, benevolent but secon- 
 dary. 
 
 Progress is the pet watchword of these pro- 
 gressive times, but highest progress is not al- 
 ways forward movement. In some things seem- 
 ing retrograde is real advance. Some things 
 come complete from the hand of God, and some 
 things were perfected by human ingenuity ages 
 ago. In pursuit of these, return to first princi- 
 ples is highest progress. In poetry we cannot 
 improve on Homer or Isaiah ; in ethics we find 
 6 
 
42 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 nothing superior to the ten commandments, or 
 the sermon on the mount. In architecture we 
 we cannot go beyond the Grecian orders, or the 
 Gothic of the middle ages. In creed and wor- 
 ship we cannot improve upon the simplicity of 
 the New Testament. Progress here is out of 
 the question. 
 
 Protestantism was progress when it went 
 back to New Testament principles and rejected 
 the theatrical substitutes of medievalism in 
 christian worship. Methodism has had little re- 
 gard for calendar Christianity, that reverence for 
 " times and -seasons " so annoying to the apostle 
 Paul. We have retained the forms of the fathers 
 in all their bald simplicity. Have we their enthu- 
 siasm ? Spurgeon prays " Lord give us the ear- 
 nestness and fire of the early Methodists." Pro- 
 fessor Hopkins, of the Auburn Theological 
 Seminary, laments the cold " silence worship " 
 of the Presbyterians. His reviewer says, "we 
 sit bolt upright, stock still, dumb as oysters, and 
 let the preacher and choir monopolize the entire 
 worship after the most approved style of the 
 Romish mass." Prof. Hopkins envies the Metho- 
 dist the privilege of an occasional " Amen !" 
 " Hallelujah !" " Bless the Lord !" Alas ! in 
 Methodist congregations and even in Methodist 
 conferences these vocal expressions of feeling 
 are becoming, like angel's visits, few and far be- 
 tween. The British parliament vents its appro- 
 bation of a speaker or sentiment in the enthu- 
 siastic "hear!" "hear!" The successful operatic 
 composer or performer in Italy, or the victor 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. u 
 
 in a Spanish bull fight is saluted with loud 
 "bravos !" The political stump speaker is greeted 
 with cheers and hurrahs, and the popular sover- 
 eign or leader honored with heaven rending 
 shouts and acclaims. 
 
 When Dr. Coke, ninety-five years ago preach- 
 ed to the theatre going West Indians, they ap- 
 plauded his sermons as they did their favorite 
 plays and actors, with hand clapping and stamp- 
 ing. The audiences of Beecher and Talmage 
 stimulate the eloquence of Plymouth church or 
 Brooklyn tabernacle in the same way. Opera 
 house General Conferences adopt opera house 
 styles of performance. Business meetings and 
 lectures, held in our churches, copy General 
 Conference manners and do the same. This 
 mode of demonstration is beginning to force it- 
 self (as in the Guiteau trial) into courts of jus- 
 tice, though it is felt to be exceedingly out of 
 place there. It is specially repugnant to wor- 
 ship hours and the house of God. Yet it is as 
 natural for strong religious feeling, as it is for 
 secular, to seek vent in vocal expression ; as 
 natural to express accord with a preacher as with 
 a lecturer, a public singer, a rostrum or stump 
 political speaker. Methodism from the first, has 
 encouraged ejaculatory responses, and has re- 
 garded them as perfectly fitted to the place and 
 occasion. The pulpit has relied on the pew, not 
 for applause, to feed personal vanity, but for in- 
 spiration, and especially for the divine aid vouch- 
 safed in answer to united prayer. Scripture 
 ejaculations have ever been felt to be in perfect 
 
44 
 
 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 harmony with the house and worship of God, 
 perfectly consonant with the style of religion 
 which the followers of Wesley profess. Har- 
 monies in music form not a fitter running ac- 
 companiment to a stirring melody than does a run- 
 ning undertone of suitable ejaculatory responses 
 to a prayer or sermon with those whom religion 
 makes happy. And what is genuine Methodist 
 religion ? not doctrine but spiritual experiences ; 
 not Sinai but Zion ; not Moses and the law, but 
 Christ and the gospel ; not the opening poems 
 of the book of psalms, wailing, discouraged and 
 imprecatory, but the last, paeans of praise and 
 thanksgiving ; not Romish purgatory and Cal- 
 vanistic despair, but Arminian hope and peren- 
 nial heaven ; not the gloom of Gothic Cathedrals, 
 but the light Grecian, roofed with the blue 
 heavens, and full of glorious sunshine; not bile, 
 nor misery, nor spasmodic rapture ; not momen- 
 tary ecstacy, nor laughing gas, but a happiness 
 beaming, in unclouded sunlight, from the face of 
 God, permanent as the lustre of the stars, full as 
 the flow of the full river or the waves of the 
 abundant sea. Holy hearts and sanctified voices 
 found better modes of giving expression to feel- 
 ing than political hurrahs. Hosannahs took 
 the place of huzzahs. Hallelujahs were the 
 natural vent for irrepressible ebullitions of holy 
 rapture. The in excelsis gloria of ritualistic 
 Christianity set to a thousand grand strains of 
 music, became the good square old English word 
 ''glory" on the lips of the young convert or the 
 happy christian. The gospel preacher, instead of 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL i5 
 
 being obliged to carry his congregation, ( a fear- 
 ful load for a single pair of shoulders,) found 
 himself buoyed by the enthusiasm of multi- 
 tudes, not seldom borne aloft on the wings of a 
 chorus of "aniens" to the third heaven of White- 
 fieldian eloquence. The man who could not 
 preach with such backing had good reason to 
 doubt his call to the gospel ministry ! What a 
 rush of holy memories comes over us as we recall 
 the days of the full exercise of this right arm of 
 Methodistic power ! What storms of Methodist 
 applause did Edmund S. Janes and Noah Lev- 
 ings evoke in conferences as bible agents ! What 
 memorable instances occur to each and all of the 
 reciprocal zeal, power, and magnetic influence 
 of pew and pulpit ? Photography preserves for 
 us the features and forms of the later fathers, 
 would that phonography perpetuated their in- 
 spired flights ; those of Seymour Coleman, for 
 instance, at the Petersburgh camp in 1863, elo- 
 quence indescribable ! fitted to wake responses 
 from the tongues of the dead ! Would that 
 "shocks from the battery" lived in the living 
 accents of Benjamin Pomeroy, and were not 
 buried in the silent pages of a printed book ! 
 The "amens" of the prayer book are all ar- 
 ranged with studious attention to that decorous 
 order which churchmen worship and love so well, 
 but if any thing would provoke a crowd of kneel- 
 ing, warm-hearted christians to interject "amens" 
 promiscuously, "hit or miss," it would be one of 
 the extempore prayers, of forty years ago, of 
 Jesse T. Peck or Truman Seymour. 
 
4 6 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 No Abel Stevens, now in the midst of a tem- 
 pest of shouts and tears, preaches at Eastham, 
 till they pull him away from the book board ! 
 No Francis Hodgson, in the neighborhood of 
 cultured Philadelphia, leaps sheer over the 
 breastwork into the camp meeting straw, in his 
 burning passion to get sinners converted and 
 saints sanctified ! Camp meeting fervor has evap- 
 orated. Round Lake is as decorous as State 
 Street.. We apologize for the excesses of the 
 fathers, and are annoyed with a few chance vocal 
 " amens" in the midst of a prayer or sermon. 
 Yet, some of us have seen times when the pew 
 has overwhelmed the pulpit, when the shouts of 
 happy saints have accomplished results which 
 the sermon and preacher failed to secure. 
 
 What shall we say of our ever lengthening 
 death roll ? At six sessions, only, in fifty years 
 has the answer to the question, " Who has died 
 this year?" been " None." On every other year, 
 sometimes as high as seven a year, the great 
 harvester has claimed his sheaves. Memorial 
 services have become so common as to be per- 
 functory. Funeral sermons and set eulogies are 
 out of fashion, and formal obituaries, made up 
 of dates and common places, are the dullest 
 things 'in literature. The " In Memoriam " of 
 the Annual Minutes excites less interest than a 
 newspaper column detailing the latest crhninal 
 execution. 
 
 For once, if only once, in fifty years, let us put 
 away indifference, and the hired undertaker's 
 ostentatious woe, and ask " how did these fellow 
 
SEMI CENTENNIAL. 47 
 
 heralds die ? A score went suddenly as if by 
 lightning stroke. Fifty others sank into insensi- 
 bility or struggled with over-mastering pain and 
 disease, or confined themselves to general decla- 
 rations of soul peace and readiness to live or die. 
 
 Full fifty others left positive dying testimonies, 
 those which christians love to hear so well, rang- 
 ing all the way from the language of simple trust 
 in God in the hour of death, to the highest ex- 
 pressions of rapture, triumph, victory. What a 
 rich legacy to the church are these precious last 
 words ! The sacraments are often administered 
 to the dying. Methodist preface to the sacra- 
 ment is a love feast, and the love feast a wealth 
 of glorious experiences ! What an unparalleled 
 love feast would the death-bed utterances of the 
 loved and lost of Troy Conference furnish forth ! 
 
 Coles Carpenter, who heads the roll of the 
 departed, went breathing forth " glory ! glory ! 
 glory !" as long as breath lasted. Wright Ha- 
 zen, among other beautiful things, said " the 
 cradle of death is fast rocking me away to eter- 
 nity — and I am sure it rocks easy !" James 
 B. Houghtaling, secretary of the conference for 
 the first nineteen years of its existence, drops his 
 pen with the exultant shout " I am going to my 
 home in heaven !" The venerable Elias Vander- 
 lip is " pluming his wings for flight!" The 
 wretched cripple Ryder breathes out his soul 
 with the gentle aspiration ""Jesus ! Jesus !" The 
 beloved Moriarty ejaculates, " Glory to God ! 
 all is well !" Datus Ensign, " Jesus is precious ! 
 he is my all in all." The venerable Spicer, un- 
 
48 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 poetic soul ! in the midst of a night of excrucia- 
 ting suffering inquires, "What time is it ?" " Past 
 twelve." " Then it is morning, henceforth, it 
 shall be no more, 'good night,' but always ' good 
 morning.'" Sherman Miner cheers the watchers 
 by the entrance of the dark valley, shouting 
 as he enters, " there's light ahead." James Quin- 
 lan, " a flood of glory fills my soul !" Halsey W. 
 Ransom, as he nears the fanes of the New Jerusa- 
 lem, cries with the rapture of a tired traveler, " I 
 see the city !" Eri Baker exults " I never ex- 
 pected such a victory ! Hallelujah ! dying is a 
 pleasure ! It pays to be true to God !" Hiram 
 Harris triumphs, " O the glory ! I have seen 
 the king in his beauty !" Hiram Chase, at the 
 end of a troubled pilgrimage of seventy-six years, 
 says " Such a lighting up of the glory of God in 
 my soul, I never experienced before." The ven- 
 erable Araunah Lyon has "glorious visions of 
 Christ! It is all glorious in the Lord! Every 
 thing is as clear as light !" Edward Turner had 
 the doors of his sick room open to all comers, 
 that he might teach his people how to die. " I 
 expected," said he, " that Christ would be my 
 support when death approached, but I had no 
 idea that he would so fill my soul with love and 
 joy." The impulsive Elisha Watson exultantly 
 cries " To God in the highest, be glory !" "^An- 
 gels all in white," flood with celestial radiance 
 the death chamber of the youthful Melville 
 Senter, as he reiterates " Heaven !" "Glory !" 
 " Jesus !" " Blessed Lord !" " O death, where is 
 thy sting ! O grave, where is thy victory !" Did 
 
SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 49 
 
 cherub bands, alter the fashion toward conquer- 
 ors of old, unharness the steeds of fire, and drag 
 with their own hands the chariot of that trium- 
 phing spirit, with thunders of hosannah, through 
 the gates of the beautiful city ? Surely, Troy 
 Conference sustains the righteous boast long 
 since put forth for Methodism, " our people 
 die well." 
 
 So may we all die ! in holy confidence, if not 
 in exultant rapture ; in sure and certain hope of 
 a glorious resurrection, followed by the regrets 
 that always attend the departure of the good ; 
 and worthy of that sublimest eulogy ever pro- 
 nounced over the coffin of mortal, voiced direct 
 from heaven, " blessed are the dead which die 
 in the Lord ! yea, saith the spirit, that they may 
 rest from their labors and their works follow 
 them." 
 
 In our posthumous influence lies our true im- 
 mortality. How long we shall be remembered 
 depends upon the depth and ineffaceableness of 
 the impressions we have made upon our con- 
 temporaries. No need, then, of blocks of gran- 
 ite and marble over our graves to challenge the 
 inquiry "what mean these stones !" 
 
 In the young men before me, just entering 
 upon the second half-century of Troy Confer- 
 ence existence, 1 address possible college presi- 
 dents, bishops, general conference officials, men 
 who will combine the wisdom of Hedding with 
 the holiness of Hamline and the energy of Janes; 
 the silvery eloquence of Fiske and the lightning 
 flashes of Durbin with the learning of McClin- 
 
jo 
 
 SEMI-CENTENNIA L. 
 
 tock, and the sweeping irresistibleness of Olin ; 
 or, those, on the other hand, whose quiet lives 
 may be passed in rural districts, and pioneer la- 
 bors. It matters not. The work of each and all 
 will be felt and remembered. The death-bed 
 exhortation of the expiring era is " whatsoever 
 thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for 
 there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor 
 wisdom in the grave whither thou goest." 
 
 The dates of the year 1900 and upward will 
 be written upon few of our tombstones. Ours 
 will be scattered graves. f ne itinerant is buried 
 where he falls. No conspicuous headstone 
 marks the place of his rest. His true monu- 
 ment will be the love and veneration of saved 
 souls, comforted human homes and hearts A 
 single ray is lost in the effulgence of the sun, 
 but it travels on and on forever, bearing warmth 
 and lustre in its infinite flight. The glory of the 
 individual is the glory of the body of which he 
 forms an integer. Next to being a christian is 
 the glory of being a minister in the church of 
 God, subordinate to that is the glory and honor 
 of being a member of a conference of the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church! We call on 1932 to 
 show a century of work that shall give the-Troy 
 Conference a proud place in history, entitle it 
 to the gratitude of millions, and the respect of 
 mankind. 
 
TROY CONFERENCE. 
 
 INITIAL SESSION. 
 
 Held in conjunction with the Vew York Conference^ in New York, June 
 6th, /.\\v, Elijah Heading, assisted by Robot R. Robots, presiding. 
 
 Names marked with s-ar *, deceased ; t Living in 1882; } unknown. 
 Superannuated, Cyprian H. Gridley,* Ibri Cannon*. 
 
 Charges. Preachers. Numbers. 
 
 TROY DISTRICT. Arnold Scholefield, P. E.* 5,215 
 
 Troy Buell Goodsell* 577 
 
 West Troy Freeborn G. Hibbardt 80 
 
 Albia Edwin F. Whiteside* 109 
 
 Chatham and Nassau Seymour Coleman* 871 
 
 Alden S. Coopert 
 
 " John Peg-g* 
 
 Pittsfield Jarvis Z. Nichols* 209 
 
 Dalton Henry Burton* 345 
 
 Petersburg John M. Weaver* 515 
 
 " John G. Barker:}: 
 
 Hoosic and Bennington Wright Hazen* 340 
 
 Cambridge Stephen Remington}: 561 
 
 Henry Smith* 
 
 Washington Jacob Beeman* 574 
 
 William F. Hurdt 
 
 " Sherman Miner* 
 
 Pittstown and Schaghticoke . . . Roswell Kelly* 786 
 
 James Caughey+ 
 
 ...Jacob Hall* 
 
 Lansingburgh and Waterford. .Timothy Benedict* 243 
 
 SARATOGA DISTRICT. Henry Stead, P. E.* 5,842 
 
 Albanv. South John B. Stratton* 305 
 
 Garretson Thomas Burch* 349 
 
 Schenectady Salmon StebbinsJ 243 
 
 Watervliet Joshua Poort 280 
 
 Berne John W. DennistonJ 1,186 
 
 Hiram Meekert 
 
 M Henry Fames* 
 
 1 1 thnsto >wn Samuel Covel* 347 
 
 William D. Stead* 
 
 Spraker's Basin James B. Houghtaling* 122 
 
 Northampton Cyrus Meekert 759 
 
 Orrin Pier* 
 
 Samuel Howe* 
 
 Halfmoon James Quintan* 574 
 
 William Amer* 
 
 Gilbert Lyon* 
 
 Andrew McKean* 
 
5 2 SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 
 
 Charges. Preachers. Numbers. 
 
 Saratoga and Mechanicville Daniel Brayton* 664 
 
 " Thomas Newman* 
 
 " Datus Ensign* 
 
 " " .... William Anson* 
 
 " " John D. Moriarty* 
 
 Luzerne Henry R. Colemant 344 
 
 Warren Joseph McCreary* 560 
 
 Sandy Hill and Glen's Falls. . . .Coles Carpenter* 159 
 
 MIDDLEBURY DISTRICT. Tobias Spicer, P. E.* 3.201 
 
 Middiebury Peter C. Oakleyt 201 
 
 Monkton Joseph Ayrest 346 
 
 Charlotte Joseph Earnest 214 
 
 Westport and Essex Hiram Chase* 530 
 
 " Barnabas Hitchcock* 
 
 Ticonderoga Amos Hazleton* 204 
 
 Orville Kimpton* 
 
 Bridgport Samuel Eighmy* x!53 
 
 Leicester William Ryder* 21)9 
 
 ... John Alley* 
 
 Pittsford Elias Craw ford* 310 
 
 Asa C. Hand:}: 
 
 Wallingford Christopher R. Morris* 241 
 
 Whitehall and Castleton Elisha Andrews* 311 
 
 Charles P. Clarke* 
 
 Poultney Friend W. Smith* 105 
 
 Granville Reuben Wescottt 187 
 
 PLATTSBURGH DISTRICT, Samuel D. Ferguson, P. E.* 4,234 
 
 Plattsburgh Truman Seymour* 145 
 
 Grand Isle and Alburgh Lewis Potter* 330 
 
 " " John Fraser* 
 
 Highgate Jacob Leonardt 280 
 
 Sheldon Benjamin Marvin* . . 552 
 
 Josiah H. Brown* 
 
 Fairfield John P. Foster* 420 
 
 Hiram Knapp; 
 
 Stowe Orris Pier* 352 
 
 Milton Luman A. Sanfordt 21? 
 
 St. Albans Joseph D. Marshall* 190 
 
 Burlington and Essex Elijah Crane* 100 
 
 11 " Abiathar M. Osbont 
 
 Chazy and Champlain Ephraim Goss* 461 
 
 " " Milton H. Stewart* 
 
 John W. B. Woodt 
 
 Beekmantown Joel Squiert 247 
 
 Peru and Redford Dillon Stephens* 410 
 
 " " Araunah Lyon* 
 
 John W. Belknapt 
 
 Jay James R. Goodricht 435 
 
 " Albert Wickware* 
 
 Keeseville Merritt Bates* C5 
 
MEMBF.RS OF C( >\TEREXCE DECEASED 
 
 SSEL 
 
 Coles Carpenter March 17, 1784 [809 
 
 Andrew C. Mills. .. . Dec. — , 1807 1888 
 
 Arnold Schoieheld L810 
 
 Wright Hazen L800 1827 
 
 Philetus Green Julv 16, 1809 1888 
 
 Amos R. Ripley 1808 1889 
 
 Gilbert V. Palmer 1814 L888 
 
 Daniel Holmes August 24, 1802 1832 
 
 William D. Stead 1799 1882 
 
 Charles Sherman. . . Oct. 20,1808 1830 
 
 James Covel, Jun Sept. 4, L896 1816 
 
 Thomas Kirby Julv 28, 1815 183*3 
 
 Alfred Saxe Sept. 6,1814 1843 
 
 Samuel Eighmv 1789 1814 
 
 Daniel F. Page 1835 
 
 William Anson 1768 1800 
 
 Elias Vanderlip 1764 180'_> 
 
 William Ryder lune 27, 1805 1881 
 
 John D. Moriartv .. August 1, 1793 L820 
 
 lohn P. Foster 1829 
 
 John Lindsay July 18, 1788 L809 
 
 Chester Lvon 1839 
 
 Henry Earues June 23,1774 1800 
 
 James F. Burrows... Feb. I". 1826 L848 
 
 Elijah B. Hubbard 1799 1884 
 
 Cyrus Bolster 1818 1845 
 
 ( diver Emerson L814 1834 
 
 Datus Ensign Oct. 16, 1783 1804 
 
 Richard Griffin 1828 1*49 
 
 John Bannard Jan. 6, 1820 1850 
 
 Valentine Brown . June 6, 1806 1839 
 
 Henry Stead April 10,1774 L804 
 
 fosiah H.Brown 1810 1*32 
 
 Harvey S. Smith 1820 1843 
 
 Elijah Chichester 1778 1835 
 
 Jas. B. Houghtaiing.. Oct. 9,1797 1828 
 
 Thomas B. Pearson.. Sept. 28, 1827 l s .~>" 
 
 Samuel Howe March 20,1780 1802 
 
 Edward S. Stout Feb. 15, L812 1833 
 
 Stephen Stiles .. Feb. 10,1800 1833 
 
 Ahriah H. Seaver 1859 
 
 Albinus Johnson | 1823 1847 
 
 Samuel Covel ' 1821 
 
 William X. Fraser. . J 1810 1836 
 
 Dillon Stevens April 6, 1794 1822 
 
 Egbert H. Foster 1823 1845 
 
 Christopher R. Morris Jan. 26,1807 1829 
 
 Joseph Conner Julv 5,1810 1840 
 
 Tobias Spicer Nov. 7,1788 1810 
 
 John Haslam 1802 1838 
 
 Jacob Hall 179! 1816 
 
 John B. Stratton 1785 1811 
 
 Lewis Potter Sept. 26, 1806 1830 
 
 Andrew M'Kean. ... July 28, 1777 1802 
 
 OrrinPier March 7,1797 1819 
 
 Sylvester W. Cooper. Oct. 31,1889 186] 
 
 Samuel H. Hancock . June 21, 1825 1849 
 
 Sherman Miner March 14, 1793 1815 
 
 James Quinlan Feb. 15. 17931 1818 
 
 Ephraim Goss April 15, 1794J 1829 
 
 Died. 
 
 \ • 
 
 Feb. 
 
 Nov. 
 
 Feb. 
 
 June 
 
 Dec. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 Jan. 
 
 March 
 
 May 
 
 July 
 
 Oct. 
 
 March 
 
 July 
 
 Sept. 
 
 Feb. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 Sept. 
 
 April 
 
 April 
 
 Feb. 
 
 April 
 
 July 
 
 May 
 
 Sept. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 Jan. 
 
 April 
 
 Aug. 
 
 Nov. 
 Feb. 
 Aug. 
 Aug. 
 Oct. 
 March 
 
 Oct. 
 
 Jan. 
 Feb. 
 May 
 
 Dec. 
 
 Nov. 
 
 Feb. 
 
 April 
 
 June 
 
 Julv 
 
 Dec. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 Nov. 
 
 April 
 
 Feb. 
 
 Aug. 
 
 I Nov. 
 
 17, L834 50 
 
 ... 18 
 
 .. . 1887 . . 
 
 12, L8J 
 
 10, 1840 31 
 
 17, L842 ::i 
 
 81, 1842 28 
 
 5, 1843 M 
 
 6, 1844 15 
 10, 1844 ll 
 15, 1845 19 
 10, 1846 31 
 
 8, 1846 32 
 
 1, 1847 60 
 ...1848 
 
 17, 1848 80 
 :;, 18 
 
 .. . 1849 t I 
 
 18, 1849 56 
 ... 1849 
 20, I860 
 
 19, L850 
 6, 1851 
 
 2, 1852 
 
 22, 1852 
 
 17, 1853 
 
 22, 1853 
 
 . . . 1853 
 
 1. 1853 
 
 11, 1854 
 
 24, 1S54 
 
 62 
 
 77 
 26 
 53 
 35 
 39 
 70 
 30 
 :;i 
 48 
 
 18, 1854 80 
 
 7, 1855 
 
 8, 1855 
 21, 1855 
 ... 1857 
 
 IS, 1851 
 
 16, L858 
 
 3, 1859 
 
 24, 1859 
 
 — . 1858 
 
 2, I860 
 
 ... I860 
 
 19, I860 
 
 10, L861 
 
 14, ISO: 
 
 11. L861 
 27, 1861 
 13, L862 
 ::, L863 
 
 19, 1863 
 
 20, L863 
 
 15, L863 57 
 19, 1863 86 
 10, 1864 67 
 23, 1864 
 
 5, L865 
 10, 1860 
 19, 1866 
 
 6, 1866 
 
 46 
 35 
 77 
 60 
 3ii 
 > 
 
 i; 
 
 59 
 
 37 
 
 50 
 67 
 
 54 
 51 
 74 
 60 
 69 
 > 
 
Names. 
 
 Born. 
 
 Entered 
 Conf'nce 
 
 Died. 
 
 
 Age. 
 
 Halsey W. Ransom. 
 
 
 .. 1811 
 
 1848 
 
 March 
 
 26, 
 
 1867 
 
 ~56~ 
 
 Jacob Beeman 
 
 March 
 
 12, 1780 
 
 1809 
 
 Feb. 
 
 15, 
 
 1868 
 
 88 
 
 Alpheus Wade 
 
 June 
 
 14, 1801 
 
 1838 
 
 July 
 
 26, 
 
 1868 
 
 67 
 
 Norris Mihill 
 
 
 . . 1823 
 15, 1795 
 
 1866 
 1823 
 
 Oct. 
 April 
 
 3, 
 
 
 
 1868 
 1869 
 
 45 
 
 Stephen L. Stillman. 
 
 April 
 
 74 
 
 Isaac Parks 
 
 Sept. 
 
 6, 1803 
 
 1834 
 
 April 
 
 is! 
 
 1869 
 
 66 
 
 David W. Gould. . . . 
 
 . . . 1824 
 
 1850 
 
 May 
 
 5, 
 
 1869 
 
 45 
 
 Merritt Bates 
 
 July 
 
 12, 1806 
 
 1827 
 
 Aug. 
 
 23, 
 
 1869 
 
 63 
 
 David Lytle 
 
 Oct. 
 
 31, 1826 
 
 1855 
 
 Oct. 
 
 13, 
 
 1869 
 
 43 
 
 Ensign Stover 
 
 May 
 
 15, 1815 
 
 1839 
 
 May 
 
 8, 
 
 1871 
 
 56 
 
 William R. Brown . . 
 
 March 
 
 7, 1828 
 
 1850 
 
 June 
 
 8, 
 
 1871 
 
 43 
 
 Eri Baker 
 
 
 ... 1833 
 
 1866 
 
 Feb. 
 
 18, 
 
 1872 
 
 39 
 
 Bennett Eaton. 
 
 Dec. 
 
 31, 1806 
 
 1850 
 
 March 
 
 7, 
 
 1872 
 
 65 
 
 Hiram Harris 
 
 July 
 
 19, 1824 
 
 1852 
 
 
 
 1872 
 
 48 
 
 John M. Weaver 
 
 July 
 
 5, 1792 
 
 1829 
 
 May 
 
 12, 
 
 1872 
 
 80 
 
 Albert Champlin . . . 
 
 Dec. 
 
 3, 1809 
 
 1834 
 
 June 
 
 18, 
 
 1872 
 
 61 
 
 Henry A. Warren . . 
 
 March 
 
 30, 1839 
 
 1870 
 
 June 
 
 29, 
 
 1872 
 
 34 
 
 Cyprian H. Gridley. 
 
 
 ... 1787 
 
 1808 
 
 Aug. 
 
 28, 
 
 1872 
 
 85 
 
 Berea O. Meeker . . . 
 
 May 
 
 13, 1816 
 
 1838 
 
 Jan. 
 
 3, 
 
 1873 
 
 56 
 
 Asaph Shurtliff 
 
 
 ...1802 
 
 1853 
 
 Feb. 
 
 3, 
 
 1873 
 
 71 
 
 Paul P. Atwell 
 
 March 
 
 28, 1801 
 
 1843 
 
 June 
 
 13, 
 
 1873 
 
 72 
 
 Jas. H. Patterson. . . 
 
 March 
 
 16, 1810 
 
 1833 
 
 Dec. 
 
 24, 
 
 1873 
 
 63 
 
 Samuel Young.. . . 
 
 March 
 
 22, 1794 
 
 1833 
 
 Jan. 
 
 26, 
 
 1874 
 
 80 
 
 Alvin Robbins 
 
 July 
 
 5, 1816 
 
 1841 
 
 April 
 
 10, 
 
 1874 
 
 58 
 
 Alanson W. Garvin. 
 
 April 
 
 14, 1813 
 
 1843 
 
 June 
 
 19, 
 
 1874 
 
 61 
 
 Sylvester P.Williams 
 
 April 
 
 16, 1809 
 
 1831 
 
 Sept. 
 
 14, 
 
 1874 
 
 65 
 
 Miltcn H. Stewart. . 
 
 
 
 1831 
 1839 
 
 
 
 80 
 
 Alfred A. Farr 
 
 Aug. 
 
 
 
 29, 1810 
 
 Nov. 
 
 4, 
 
 1874 
 
 64 
 
 Truman Seymour. . . 
 
 Jan. 
 
 25, 1799 
 
 1829 
 
 Nov. 
 
 15, 
 
 1874 
 
 75 
 
 William C. Butcher. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 30, 1841 
 
 1869 
 
 Dec. 
 
 14, 
 
 1874 
 
 33 
 
 Alexander Dixon. . . 
 
 June 
 
 9, 1799 
 
 1836 
 
 April 
 
 12, 
 
 1875 
 
 76 
 
 Chester Chamberlain 
 
 Jan. 
 
 19, 1807 
 
 1834 
 
 July 
 Sept. 
 
 30, 
 
 1875 
 
 68 
 
 John F. Crowl 
 
 
 .. . 1824 
 
 1843 
 
 14, 
 
 1875 
 
 51 
 
 Bernice D. Ames. . . 
 
 Dec. 
 
 26, 1827 
 
 1857 
 
 Jan. 
 
 5, 
 
 1876 
 
 4s 
 
 Melville A. Senter 
 
 March 
 
 24, 1847 
 
 1867 
 
 Feb. 
 
 1, 
 
 1876 
 
 29 
 
 Hiram Dunn 
 
 Feb. 
 
 5, 1812 
 
 1836 
 
 March 
 
 1, 
 
 1876 
 
 64 
 
 Araunah Lyon 
 
 Oct. 
 
 24, 1804 
 
 1831 
 
 Nov. 
 
 6, 
 
 1876 
 
 72 
 
 Newton B. Wood. . . 
 
 Nov. 
 
 8, 1814 
 
 1840 
 
 Dec. 
 
 8, 
 
 1876 
 
 62 
 
 Hiram Chase 
 
 Feb. 
 
 1, 1801 
 
 1827 
 
 Jan. 
 
 9, 
 
 1877 
 
 76 
 
 Seymour Coleman . . 
 
 Dec. 
 
 23, 1794 
 
 1828 
 
 Jan. 
 
 23, 
 
 is; ; 
 
 82 
 
 George S. Gold .... 
 
 Nov. 
 
 11, 1813 
 
 1841 
 
 Feb. 
 
 21, 
 
 1878 
 
 65 
 
 Charles C. Gilbert. . 
 
 
 
 1843 
 1817 
 
 March 
 May 
 
 13, 
 6, 
 
 1878 
 1878 
 
 
 Timothy Benedict . . 
 
 May 
 
 25, 1795 
 
 83 
 
 John L. Cook 
 
 Jan. 
 
 7, 1819 
 
 1846 
 
 May 
 
 15, 
 
 1878 
 
 59 
 
 John Thompson. . . . 
 
 Aug. 
 
 20, 1800 
 
 1840 
 
 July 
 
 9, 
 
 1878 
 
 7S 
 
 William W. Atwater 
 
 Feb. 
 
 15, 1814 
 
 1842 
 
 Aug. 
 Nov. 
 
 3, 
 
 1878 
 
 64 
 
 Edward Turner. . . . 
 
 June 
 
 23, 1832 
 
 1858 
 
 30, 
 
 1878 
 
 46 
 
 Elisha Watson 
 
 Feb. 
 
 15, 1822 
 
 1846 
 
 Jan. 
 
 11, 
 
 1879 
 
 57 
 
 Matthias Ludlam . . . 
 
 
 
 
 1843 
 
 March 
 
 19, 
 
 1879 
 
 60 
 
 Ward Bullard 
 
 Feb." 
 
 8, 1810 
 
 1838 
 
 May 
 
 21, 
 
 1879 
 
 69 
 
 John Pegg 
 
 
 ... 1800 
 
 1832 
 
 Aug. 
 
 26, 
 
 1S79 
 
 7!) 
 
 Benjamin Pomeroy. 
 
 
 . . . 1806 
 
 1835 
 
 May 
 
 Aug. 
 
 12, 
 
 1880 
 
 74 
 
 Warren B. Osgood. . 
 
 Feb." ' 
 
 5, 1844 
 
 1868 
 
 17, 
 
 1880 
 
 36 
 
 Benjamin S. Sharp. . 
 
 Oct. 
 
 11, 1834 
 
 1858 
 
 Nov. 
 
 1, 
 
 1880 
 
 46 
 
 George J. Brown. . . 
 
 Nov. 
 
 12, 1839 
 
 1868 
 
 Dec. 
 
 1, 
 
 1880 
 
 41 
 
 William Bedell 
 
 Nov. 
 
 25, 1820 
 
 1848 
 
 Jan. 
 
 27, 
 
 1881 
 
 60 
 
 Chas. B. Armstrong. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 14, 1848 
 
 1872 
 
 May 
 
 13 
 
 1881 
 
 33 
 
 Henry Smith 
 
 June 
 
 30, 1803 
 
 1832 
 
 May 
 
 18, 
 
 1881 
 
 78 
 
 Charles H. Leonard 
 
 
 
 1836 
 
 May 
 
 24, 
 
 1881 
 
 69 
 
 Joshua Poor 
 
 Dec. 
 
 31, 1797 
 
 1825 
 
 Nov. 
 
 28, 
 
 1F81 
 
 1 84 
 
CONFERENCE SESSIONS. 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 Presiding Bishop. 
 
 1 August 
 
 2 August 
 :; Augusl 
 
 4 June 
 
 5 May 
 
 6 June 
 
 7 June 
 
 8 June 
 
 '.i June- 
 Id June 
 
 I 1 May 
 
 L2 June 
 18 May 
 
 May 
 May 
 June 
 May 
 May- 
 May 
 June 
 ljMay 
 22 May 
 28 May 
 24 June 
 26 May 
 26 May 
 21 May 
 
 28 April 
 
 29 April 
 
 30 April 
 :;i April 
 82 March 
 88 April 
 84 April 
 36 April 
 
 36 April 
 
 37 April 
 W April 
 
 39 April 
 
 40 March 
 -II April 
 
 42 April 
 
 43 April 
 
 44 April 
 1.') April 
 
 46 April 
 
 47 April 
 
 48 March 
 
 49 April 
 
 50 April 
 
 28, 
 
 •J 7. 
 
 26, 
 
 22 
 
 8l] 
 
 6, 
 
 ■">, 
 
 17. 
 
 2 
 
 r. 
 
 21, 
 L9, 
 
 7. 
 •-'7, 
 26, 
 1 1, 
 80, 
 29, 
 21, 
 16, 
 11, 
 1". 
 
 9, 
 L8, 
 20, 
 18, 
 is, 
 11. 
 17, 
 16, 
 16, 
 80, 
 
 5, 
 18, 
 17, 
 
 8, 
 1 1. 
 28, 
 12, 
 -'7, 
 24 , 
 16, 
 21, 
 L2, 
 is, 
 IT, 
 28, 
 81, 
 20, 
 19, 
 
 L888 1 roy, \. V 
 
 1884 Plattsburgh, N. Y. 
 
 L836 Albany, X. V 
 
 L836 Pawlet, Vt 
 
 1887 Troy, N. Y 
 
 L888 Keeseville, X. V. . 
 L889 Schenectady, X. V 
 is m Middlebury, Vt . . 
 
 IS 11 Albany. X. Y 
 
 L842 Burlington, Vt . . . 
 
 L843 Troy. X. Y 
 
 1844 
 
 1846 
 
 L846 
 
 1S47 
 
 1848 
 
 L849 
 
 West Poultney, Vt 
 
 Schenectady, X. V. 
 
 Keeseville, N. Y. . . 
 
 Albany, N. Y 
 
 Troy, X. Y 
 
 Sandy Hill, N. Y... 
 
 1850 Saratoga, N. Y 
 
 1851 1 North Adams, Mass 
 L862 Plattsburgh, N. Y.. 
 1853|Schenectady, X. Y. 
 
 1854' Albany. N. Y 
 
 1855|Troy, N. Y 
 
 1856: Burlington, Yt 
 
 1867 Pittsfield, Mass 
 
 1858|Middlebury, Vt. . . 
 
 1859 
 
 I860 
 
 L861 
 
 1862 
 
 1863 
 
 Saratoga, X. Y. . . . 
 
 Lansingburgh, N. Y 
 
 Albany, N. Y 
 
 Troy, N. Y 
 
 Fort Edward, N. Y. 
 L864 Amsterdam, N. Y. . 
 1866 Plattsburgh, tf. Y . 
 
 1866 Cambridge, X. V.. 
 
 1867 Pittsfield, Mass. . . . 
 
 1868 Albany, X. Y 
 
 L869 West Troy, N. Y... 
 
 1870 Burlington, Yt. 
 
 1871 Trov, X. Y. ... 
 L872 Saratoga, X. Y 
 1873 Gloversville, N, 
 1 s7 1 Schenectady, N 
 
 1875 Glen's Falls. N. 
 
 1876 Albany. N. Y ... 
 
 1877 Plattsburgh, N. Y 
 
 1878 Lansingburgh, N. 
 
 1879 Bennington. Yt. . 
 
 1880 Burlington, Vt. . . 
 
 1881 Glen's Falls, N. Y 
 
 1882 Trov, X. Y 
 
 Y. 
 Y. 
 Y. 
 
 Bishop 
 
 ,, 
 
 " 
 " G 
 
 I redding 
 
 Hedding 
 
 Emory 
 
 Waugh 
 
 I [« dding 
 
 Morris 
 
 1 [edding 
 
 Roberts 
 
 Soule 
 
 Hedding 
 
 Waugh 
 
 Hamlin 
 
 Hedding 
 
 Janes 
 
 Morris 
 
 Hamlin 
 
 Hamlin 
 
 Morris 
 
 Janes 
 
 Janes 
 
 Waugh 
 
 Janes 
 
 Simpson 
 
 Morris 
 
 Baker 
 
 Ames 
 
 Janes 
 
 Baker 
 
 Ames 
 
 Scott 
 
 Baker 
 
 Simpson 
 
 Kingsley 
 
 Janes 
 
 Clark 
 
 Scott 
 
 Kingsley 
 
 Ames 
 
 Scott 
 
 Janes 
 
 Peck 
 
 Foster 
 
 Ames 
 
 Scott 
 
 Foster 
 
 Haven 
 
 Harris 
 
 Peck 
 
 Wiley 
 
 Simpson 
 
GENERAL CONFERENCE DELEGATES. 
 
 Twelve Quadrennial General Conferences have occurred in fifty 
 years, to which the Troy Annual Conference has sent the following 
 clerical delegates : Timothy Benedict, 1848 and '52 ; John E. 
 Bowen, 1868 ; Stephen D. Brown, 1852, '56, '64 ; William R. Brown, 
 1868 ; Chester F. Burdick, 1872 ; John Clarke, 1848 and '52 ; Seymour 
 Coleman, 1844; James Covel, 1844; Hiram Dunn, i860; Joel W. 
 Eaton, 1876 ; Homer Eaton, 1872 and '80 ; Samuel D. Ferguson, 1836 ; 
 John Frazer, 1848 and '52 ; Buel Goodsell, 1836 ; Ephraim Goss, 
 i860 ; Oren Gregg, 1864 ; William Griffin, 1856, '60, '64 ; Thomas 
 A. Grifnin, 1876 ; Barnes M. Hall. 1848, '52, '56 ; Peter P. Harrower, 
 i860 ; Bostwick Hawley, 1864 ; James B. Houghtaling, 1840 and '44 ; 
 William H. Hughes, 1880 ; David P. Hulburd, 1856 and '60 ; Joseph 
 E. King, 1864 ; Noah Levings, 1836 and '40 ; Lorenzo Marshall, 
 Samuel McKean, 1880 ; Merritt B. Mead, 1S72 ; Samuel Meredith, 
 1868 and '72 ; Sherman Miner, 1836 and 40 ; John Newman, i860 ; 
 Peter C. Oakley, 1S36 ; Stephen Parks, 1856 ; Jesse T. Peck, 1S44, 
 '48 and '68 ; Zebulon Phillips, 1852 and '56 ; Rodman H. Robinson, 
 1868 ; Hiram C. Sexton, 1872 ; Truman Seymour, 1840 and '44 ; 
 Charles Sherman, 1836 and '40 ; Tobias Spicer, 1836, 40, '44, 48 ; 
 Desevignia Starks, 1852, '6o, '64 ; Henry L. Starks, 1856 and '6o ; Jno. 
 W. Thompson, 1880 ; Sanford Washburn, 1856 and '72 ; Elisha Wat- 
 son, 1872 ; John M. Weaver, 1844 and 48 ; John M. Webster, 1S76 
 and '80; Reuben Wescott, 1852; Erastus Wentworth, 1868, '72, '76; 
 Andrew Witherspoon, 1848, '52, '56, '60. '72. 
 
 Lay Delegates — William Wells, 1872, '76 ; Hiram A.Wilson, 1872 ; 
 George L. Clarke, 1876 ; Henry M. Seely and Joseph Hillman, 1880. 
 A superannuate of the New York Conference, Nathaniel Kellogg, 
 says in a recent letter, "let me give you a specimen of an old fash- 
 ioned estimate for the keeping of a young aspirant to a city pulpit " 
 in a charge which now probably pays its pastor a salary of $3,000. 
 
 " At a meeting of the official members of the station, it was pro- 
 posed to raise for the support of our beloved preacher for the current 
 year, four hundred dollars, estimated as follows : " 
 
 Flour, including other bread stuffs $30 00 
 
 Beef and pork (salted), fish and fresh meat 40 00 
 
 Butter and cheese 12 00 
 
 Sugar, molasses, tea an J coffee 10 00 
 
 Oil and candles 7 00 
 
 Pepper, Alsoice, salt an.l ginger 8 50 
 
 Milk bill 9 00 
 
 Preserves 2 00 
 
 Wood 36 00 
 
 Add for incidentals 10 50 
 
 Disciplinary allowance self and wife 200 00 
 
 Two children 35 00 
 
 Total $400 00 
 
 " Voted that this be allowed the preacher, provided we can raise it !" 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 
 
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 provided by the library rules or by special arrangement with 
 the Librarian in charge. 
 
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 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
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 tworth 
 
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 First half century of the life and 
 v/ori: of the Irov conference.... 
 
 BRnUEDOKOl 
 
 PHOTOCOPY