142 History of Methodism 



for the Island of Antigua, in the West Indies. John 

 Dickens, Caleb Boyer, and Ignatius Pigman were 

 elected and ordained deacons. The American socie- 

 ties were thus constituted a separate Christian Church, 

 and furnished with all the means and agencies for. 

 inculcating the doctrines and administering the ordi- 

 nances of religion to the people of this vast country. 



At the Christmas Conference, Bishop Asbury de- 

 termined to occupy the fields which had been opened 

 about fifty years before by the Oxford Methodists, but 

 which, under the continued labors of Mr. Whitefielcl 

 and Mr. Pilmoor till 1773, had yielded fruit only to 

 impart life and strength to other denominations. For 

 the planting of the newly constituted Church by the 

 formation of societies and circuits within the original 

 limits of the South Carolina Conference, he selected 

 four of the best pioneer preachers then in the Connec- 

 tion, viz.: John Tunnell, Henry Willis, Beverly Allen, 

 and Woolman Hickson. Mr. Tunnell was one of the 

 thirteen elected to the order of elders, but did not re- 

 ceive ordination because he had gone in quest of health 

 to St. Christopher's, one of the West India Islands. 

 He was here solicited to remain as a preacher; but he 

 promptly declined the offer of a good salary, a house, 

 and servant to wait on him, and returned to his ap- 

 pointment in Charleston. He was received on trial 

 in 1777, and sent to the famous Brunswick Circuit in 

 Virginia; and in 1778 traveled the Baltimore Circuit. 

 "His gifts as a preacher," says Jesse Lee, "were 

 great." His brethren were fond of comparing him 

 with his classmate William Gill, the most philosophic 

 mind in the Methodist ministry of his day, and whom 

 Dr. Bush pronounced the greatest divine he had ever 

 heard; and with Caleb B. Peddicord, who was younger 



