i8 



eleven months, occupying the pulpit Sunday morn- 

 ings, conducting the prayer and conference meetings, 

 visiting the sick, and aiding in the publication of the 

 weekly paper. As he was intending at this time to 

 devote his life to missionary service in China he 

 studied medicine with Doct. Ficklen a noted phy- 

 sician of the place, whose daughter, it may be added, 

 was afterwards married to Dr. Boyce, a graduate of 

 Brown, and the founder of the Theological Seminary 

 at Louisville. 



Dr. Mercer was now rapidly approaching his end, 

 and the church accordingly extended a formal and 

 unanimous invitation to Mr. Jenks to be ordained 

 and become their settled pastor. This invitation, so 

 flattering to a young man not yet twenty-one, and so 

 indicative of the high estimation in which his pulpit 

 talents and resources were regarded by an intelligent 

 community, he felt compelled to decline, not having 

 had a theological training. An invitation to become 

 co-principal of the Female Seminary, and also an 

 adjunct professor in Mercer University he also de- 

 clined, preferring to take charge for ten months of a 

 planter's school in Taliafere County. He returned 

 home in the early part of the year 1842, having 

 labored in the South three years and four months. 



Peirce Academy, with which Mr. Jenks was 

 henceforth to be so prominently identified, and where 

 the prime of his life was spent, had been founded as 

 early as the year 1808, by Deacon Levi Peirce, for 

 the twofold purpose of securing a hall for public 



