Methodist Bishop Francis Asburys Visits in Greene County, TN

Compiled by Rev. Ronald H. Matthews

Methodist Bishop Francis Asburys Visits in Greene County, TN

Bishop Asbury often visited the Earnest family and Ebenezer Church located on the Nolichucky in eastern Greene County. The Earnest family pre-1800 house-fort still stands beside Chuckey Pike overlooking the Nolichucky River. He would have traveled the Warrensburg Road from Greeneville to Colonel Conways or the Blue Springs Road to Van Pelts and then to Warrensburg.

Figure 1 Pre-1800 Earnest Fort/ House

Figure 2 Bill Bradley at Earnest grave with Ebenezer UMC in back

20 Sep 1802 WARRENSBURG ~ I was weak and very unwell. We rode down to Greeneville, where I took a little breakfast. It was extraordinary that a man who was quite a stranger to me appeared very uneasy when he found that we had paid the landlady, it being his wish to bear the expense, and have our money returned to us - his name is Cox. The day was warm. We came on to Little Nolichucky, and lodged at Edward Warrens. (Could Robert Warrens middle name have been Edward? The historian, Goodspeed, reports that Robert Warren is the original settler for whom Warrensburg is named. ) 17 Oct 1805 WARRENSBURG ~ We crossed Main Holston and came into Tennessee, and put into Colonel Conways, Little Nolichucky; we rested here on Friday (18 Oct). At Moses Elliss, on Saturday, we saw Moses Black and his wife - he about forty, and she fteen; such are the wise contracts Methodist preachers sometimes make. Sunday (20 Oct) we passed Quertons ferry upon Great Nolichucky. In crossing the Paint Mountain, on Monday, we rode up, and walked down; and I sprained my ankle. 22 Oct 1809 WARRENSBURG ~ Sabbath. I gave them a discourse on Romans 12: 6-20. I spoke at Benjamin Van Pelts Chapel on Monday, at Warrensburg next day, my subject was Romans 6:1-5. We dined with the elders of the house of Conway, and lodged with the only son, Thomas Conway. Preached at OHavers chapel on Wednesday. Van Pelts was located near the present site of Fairview Baptist Church. Early minutes from the organization of Concord Baptist Church note that they held a organizational session meeting in Van Pelts Chapel. The approximate location of Van Pelts house and chapel is near the Ailshie Cemetery and the Bible family home.

Figure 3 Bible House seen from Ailshie Cemetery

Figure 4 Fairview Baptist Church as seen looking north from Easterly Road

Warrensburg is at the juncture of Little Chucky Creek and the Nolichucky River, in Greene County. Van Pelts chapel closed as a meeting house not too long after the Warrensburg Methodist Society was organized around 1810; thus Warrensburg is most likely the successor to Van Pelts Chapel in the communities of western Greene County, TN. Henry Conway was the head of a notable family; two of his daughters married sons of Gov. John Sevier. The Conway home was built in the early 1800s and came to be known locally as The Old Maloney Place. The late John Lloyd and Mary Ellen Smelcer were most recent owner/ residents of this property. The current Warrensburg location dates from 1884. Where was the Warrensburg Methodist Church located between 1810 and 1884?

Figure 5 Warrensburg UMC

OHavers Chapel was located near the junction of highway 321 and Salem Road. John OHaver was an old friend of Asburys. The Yett Cemetery is where the old camp meeting and later chapel were located. Oven Creek UMC is the successor congregation to OHavers Chapel. The OHaver and Swaggerty families were neighbors and the historic Swaggerty Fort still stands along Highway 321, NE of Parrottsville, TN.

Figure 6 Swaggerty Fort

Querton or Curetons Ferry was located downstream from the area of Hales Bridge on the Nolichucky. This ferry was used by Bishop Asbury traveling from Warrensburg to OHavers on his way to Warm Springs, NC.

Mass Migration into Greene County

The Warren, Conway, Crosby, Van Pelt and many other families moved from Fauquier County Virginia to Greene County Tennessee between 1789 and 1790. Caleb Pickens Crosby compiled The Crosby Family history, which is available in the T. Elmer Cox Historical Library in Greeneville, Tennessee. According to his report, Susannah Conway Crosby and seven of her and Uriel Crosbys older children moved in 1789 in the company of her nephew, Thomas Conway. Uriel and the other children arrived on or about June 26, 1790.The Crosbys have been prominent members of this community and were instrumental in the organization of Concord Baptist Church. Crosby family records

indicate a Christian worship community dating to 1796; however, the ofcial charter for The Concord Church is 1823. The rst Baptist church in Greene County was Lick Creek Baptist (now Warrensburg), which was organized 14 Sep 1793 from Bent Creek (now Whitesburg) Baptist Church. Geneva Dyer provided a copy of the 1822 Concord Church minutes, which notes a meeting of those who organized Concord Baptist Church, were to meet in Van Pelts Meeting House on at least one occasion prior to construction of their own building in 1823. Fairview Baptist Church, whose charter members moved from Concord, was organized in 1912. It appears Van Pelts Meeting House was the rst Christian worship location in western Greene County and may in fact, slightly predate Ebenezer in Eastern Greene County. Benjamin Van Pelt, Jr. (b. 01 Jun 1775 d. 1842) married Susannah Sucky Crosby (b. 22 Aug 1772 d. unknown) in 1793 in Greene County, perhaps in Van Pelts meetinghouse. Susannah was the daughter of Uriel and Susannah Conway Crosby. Benjamin Van Pelt Jr. was the son of The Reverend Benjamin Van Pelt and Mary Collins Van Pelt. They lived on property adjacent to Benjamins parents from 1793 until sometime after the death of his father in 1816. Benjamin Van Pelt Jr. and family moved to Ohio, where he was known among the pioneers as a wheelwright, and also as an occasional preacher for the Methodist church. He was a man of wide inuence, and one of the important gures of the early days of Adams County Ohio, where he lived twenty years, and after that in Highland County Ohio. He served his country as a soldier of the war of 1812. His children were fourteen in number: Joseph A., Benjamin, John, Ptiley, Anna, Susannah, Nancy, Margaret, Mary, Elizabeth, Maria, Penina, Sarah and Lydia. They are buried in Jackson Township, Highland County Ohio in Coss Cemetery on Coss Road, Belfast, Ohio. (Source: Tony Keltz, descendent of Benjamin Van Pelt Jr. and Susannah Sucky Crosby Van Pelt.) Joseph Van Pelt, a brother of Benjamin Jr. in 1801 received by deed transfer his fathers 200 acres in the Fairview-Thula community on which Van Pelts Meeting House was located. Following the death of his father in 1817, Joseph sold the property and moved his family to Blount County Tennessee. The Van Pelt family had moved from Greene County by or before 1820. The organization of Concord Baptist Church and the death of Benjamin Van Pelt most likely resulted in Van Pelts meeting house becoming obsolete and it faded into history. However the organization of the Warrensburg Methodist Society around 1810 was a logical successor.

The Reverend R.N. Price, who wrote the classic ve-volume work, Holston Methodism: From Its Origins to the Present Time (1904) describes Benjamin Van Pelt in volume one, page 135f: One of the rst Societies in East Tennessee was organized in the residence of Benjamin Van pelt, in Greene County, and a chapel named Van pelts Chapel was built before the year 1792. This was the fourth Methodist meetinghouse in the Holston Country, and the third in Tennessee, of which we have any account ... At an early date there was a camp ground at Carters Station, in the western part of Greene County, and possibly a Society and chapel. In 1792 a society was organized on the south bank of the Nolichucky, a few miles east of Greeneville. This Society consisted at that time largely of the families of Henry and Felix Earnest. Soon after the organization of the Society a meetinghouse was built and christened Ebenezer. The Society having been organized between July and September, 1792, it is possible that the meetinghouse was built that fall ... It is safe to say that the meetinghouse was erected either in 1792 or 1793. Price continues on page 193f: The Bishop speaks of Vanpelts Chapel. This, therefore, must have been one of the earliest chapels built in the Holston Country, erected, no doubt, about the time of the erection of Ebenezer meetinghouse (1792) in the Earnest settlement. R. N. Price, quoting from Jesse Cunningham, in the Methodist Episcopalian, 1850, continues: The principal man of the settlement was Benjamin Vanpelt, a local preacher, who lived on Lick Creek, in Greene County, Tenn. The meetinghouse was situated on the north side of Lick Creek, on what is now the road from the mouth of Lick Creek to the village of Mosheim, and about four miles north of the present village of Warrensburg. It was named for Benjamin Vanpelt, whose house was one of Bishop Asburys favorite stopping places. His free and disinterested hospitality has become the means of transmitting his name to posterity, along with the name of the chief founder of Methodism in the New World. About the year 1790 Mr. Vanpelt removed from Alexandria, Va. He was a local preacher, and well adapted to the country and

the times, being, as he was, well versed in the Bible and the Methodist Discipline, and being a Christian in experience and practice. He was, therefore, able to guide those who were seeking salvation, to instruct and encourage new converts, and to edify those who were more advanced in the divine life. He was a plain, unostentatious man. In gifts and usefulness he compared favorably to the preachers of his day. In his private deportment he was calm and cheerful. As a preacher he exhibited much ingenuity in his efforts to interest his hearers, and he seldom failed. He was lucid in argument, apt in illustration, and his conclusions were generally irresistible. He had no affectation of learning, and his sermons were not embellished with gems of science and literature, but were plain, matter-of-fact discourses. He appealed to the understanding, leaving the passions unmoved, except so far as to argument and facts were calculated to arouse them. He studied the subject matter beforehand what he intended to say. He did not repeat, and made it a rule to quit when he was done. He seldom preached over thirty or forty minutes and never went beyond an hour. When he was done preaching, he had said something worth remembering, something upon which his hearers might ruminate for some time to come. He not only preached near home, but he exercised his gifts in adjoining counties with acceptability and usefulness.

Camp Meetings in Greene County

Benjamin Van Pelt, Sr., was active in the camp meeting/revival era of the early 1800s. Camp Meetings were a source of spiritual nurture, social interaction, and entertainment. There were two major campgrounds in Greene County. Stone Dam Campground, which was located near the current Stone Dam United Methodist Church and Carters Station Campground, which is located in the Albany Community on the same property as Carters Station United Methodist Church. During camp meetings the folks from surrounding communities would pack up their horses, load their wagons with provisions and travel to spend a week or more camping together for worship and fellowship.

The Reverend Jacob Young wrote of an occasion at Carters Station as follows: At the close of the year I attended a camp meeting at Carters Station, where about ten thousand people were assembled. Here a controversy had been going on between Presbyterians and Methodists, the former saying, among other bitter things that the latter were hypocrites and could refrain from shouting if they would. They were the aristocracy; we, the poor. On Monday I preached, preceded by the venerable Van Pelt, who left the congregation calmly and silently weeping ... Some readers may question the reliability of a count of ten thousand at Carters Station. It is always possible that a number was misread or that it is an example of ministerial estimation. Regardless, we may safely assume there were a lot of folks at the camp meeting! We know people from Warrensburg and Thula were present at Carters Station and that Benjamin Van Pelt was one of the preachers.

Figure 7 Carters Station UMC

NOTE: Selected excerpts from the Journal of Bishop Francis Asbury with additional geographical/historical data provided by Ron Matthews, Holston Conference of The United Methodist Church.