Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/264

 204 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI lie did not live in Southeast Missouri, but spent most of the years of his residence within the state, in St. Louis. On various occasions he visited the churches in Southeast Missouri and exercised a great influence on the devel- opment of religious work in this section. He resided for a time in New York and began his ministerial work there. He was appointed by the Home Missionary Society to prosecute the work of the church in Missouri. Accompanied by his family and by another minister named James E. Welch, he came to the state in 1817. The next twenty years of lis life were spent in teaching, preaching and organizing all over the section. He was a student and collected most copious notes on social, religious and po- litical conditions of ]Iissouri. He was an in- defatigable writer. His influence was very great over the course of Baptist development, and he, more than any other man, was respon- sible for the missionary spirit that prevailed among the churches of the early day. The itinerant preachers of the Methodist church have always been found among the first in every new country. As soon as the restrictions on religious worship were removed from the people of Louisiana by the transfer to the United States, arrangements began to be made for sending a Methodist preacher to the territory. The "Western Conference, which included all the territory west of the Alle- ghany mountains, at its meeting in Greenville, Tennessee, in 1806, appointed John Travis to the Missouri circuit. He entered upon his work here and established two districts, the Missouri district and the Maramec district, the latter being south of the jMissouri river. In 1807 Edward Wilcox was appointed to the Maramec circuit, and in 1808 Joseph Oglesby was appointed ; he, however, did not take up the work and his place was supplied by Thomas Wright, and Z. !iMaddox v.-as ap- pointed as local preacher to look after the Cape Girardeau district. The first Methodist society west of the Mis- sissippi river was organized about 1806 at JIcKendree, three miles west of Jackson in Cape Girardeau county. Among the members of this church were William Williams and wife, John Randol and wife, Thomas Blair, Simon and Isaiah Poe, Charnel Glascock and the Seeleys. Within a short time after the organization of this church a meeting house was erected of large, hewn poplar logs. The house was in a beautiful situation near a spring and shaded by large oak trees. It soon became famous as a camp ground and was the site of many camp meetings. The house, with some alterations and repairs, is still in exist- ence. It is, perhaps, the oldest Protestant meeting house west of the Mississippi river. It is a question as to what minister organ- ized this early Methodist society. When John Travis came to Missouri he found this church already in existence, and it seems probable that it had been organized by Rev. Jesse Walker, who, in 1801, was stationed near the mouth of the Cumberland river, and who afterward came to Missouri. In 1806, while the Western Conference sent Travis to Mis- souri, it also sent Walker to Illinois. It seems, however, to be fairly certain that he did not confine his labors to Illinois, but crossed over, preached, and organized churches in what is now Missouri. When the confer- ence met in 1807, at Chillicothe, Ohio, Travis reported that the two circuits. Cape Girar- deau and the Maramec, had one hundred and six memliers. At this time Walker was as- signed to the Cape Girardeau circuit. He came to Missouri in the summer of that year and was accompanied on his trip by William McKendree, who was then presiding elder of