Page:A short account of the rise and progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America.djvu/77

 Simon Murray and Edward Johnson, present, (Durham Stephens, Daniel Pernal, and Arthur Landford, were not at the Conference)—5. Total number, 22. The number of members returned: Zion Church, 763; Asbury Church, 150; New-Haven, 24 ; Long Island, 155; Wesleyan Church, 300; Easton, Penn., 18. Total, 1426. Amount collected for the Conference—$27,30, in Zion Church; $7,78, in Asbury Church, —whole amount, $35,08. They agreed that the next yearly Conference should be in Philadelphia, on the 16th day of May, 1822. It may not be amiss to state here, that about this time our new house was finished, and on Sunday, the 18th March, 1821, it was considered consecrated, although not in the usual form, because we had been holding meetings in it all the time from the time the floor was laid. During the interval of the two African yearly Conferences, great anxiety existed in the minds of the official brethren, relative particularly to the case of ordination and being established as a connexion, for they found that while they were waiting for uncertainties in regard to what their white brethren would do, things were getting more and more out of order, so that about the 27th September, there were three different opinions existing among them; one class was for consulting to return under the government of the old connexion; another was for getting ordination from William M. Stilwell and his associates, as soon as possible, and be thereby established under the African Methodist Discipline ; and a third was for continuing as they were and be content with electing