162 History of Methodism 



lis, and Isaac Smith as his colleague. Mr. Smith was 

 a native of Virginia, served as a private and an officer 

 in the Revolutionary War, was present at the battles 

 of Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, 

 and Stony Point, and bore the honorable scars of the 

 conflict to his grave. He enlisted as a soldier of the 

 Lord Jesus in 1783, was received on trial into the Vir- 

 ginia Conference the following year, and sent as a 

 colleague of Jesse Lee to the Salisbury Circuit, and 

 in 1785 was associated with Thomas Humphreys on 

 the Tar River Circuit in North Carolina. He con- 

 tinued to fill prominent appointments in the South 

 Carolina Conference till 1796, when he located and 

 engaged in mercantile pursuits in Camden. He re- 

 entered the itinerant ranks in 1820, and in 1822 was 

 sent as a missionary to the Creek Indians, in charge 

 of a school to be established among them. Here he 

 shone as a light in a dark jjlace, till the infirmities of 

 age compelled him to take a superannuated relation 

 to the Conference in 1827. He died of a cancer, in 

 Monroe county, Georgia, in 1834, " full of faith and 

 the comfort of the Holy Ghost," after more than half 

 a century of ministerial life, aged seventy-six years. 

 " He was one of the fathers of the Church in this 

 country," say the Minutes, " and entitled to be had in 

 everlasting remembrance. We cannot trust ourselves 

 to speak fully of him. He was the oldest, and; what 

 was well becoming the father of the Conference, the 

 most honored and beloved of all the preachers. Be- 

 lieving every word of God, meek above the reach of 

 provocation, and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of 

 love and devotion, he was a saint indeed." 



It was during this year, 1786, his first in the South 

 Carolina Conference, while engaged in forming the 



