March 5, 1805 — to Members of Olive Branch Chapel, Virginia.
EDMUND TAYLOR’S, N.C.
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 388
An invitation had been extended by the members and friends of Olive Branch Church for the next meeting of the Virginia Conference. After consideration Bishops Asbury and Whatcoat politely advise them that Norfolk has been chosen as the seat of the next conference.
EDMUND TAYLOR’S, N.C.1
March 5, 1805
[TO MEMBERS OF OLIVE BRANCH CHAPEL,
VIRGINIA.]2
Very dear Brethren:
We feel ourselves under obligations to you together with our other brethren and friends at and in the neighbourhood of Olive Branch Chapel for your particular respect for and attention to (our) The Virginia Conference. We accordingly received your petition and therein found your most sincere request that this conference should be appointed to sit next at Olive Branch.
We thought it our duty and interest to pay attention thereto and we undoubtedly were more attentive when we heard of the divine approbation of God to it in owning and blessing the labours of and making the Word exhibited there, spirit and life, so that many souls will praise God in time and in eternity. Great joy indeed to us, to you and to all Zion’s lovers. Therefore brethren if conference is so great a blessing as to cause remembrance in time and eternity we should remember others when it goeth well with us. Therefore as conference has never been in Norfolk, though they have repeatedly petitioned for it, we have favoured them with the next which will commence on Friday the fourteenth of February, 1806. Dear brethren we most earnestly request that you would join with us in prayer to the great head of the church that He may make it spirit and life to our Norfolk brethren and friends that hundreds and thousands of them may help us praise God in time and eternity——
We remain dear brethren, yours affectionate in the bonds of a pure gospel. FRANCIS ASBURY
ALEXANDER M’CAINE SEC.
This letter was the property of Lucy Gray Kendall (deceased), associate editor of The Upper Room, a descendant of Edward Dromgoole. It is now in the Southern Methodist University.
Notes (2)
- The Virginia Conference was in session then at Edmund Taylor’s in Granville County, North Carolina. At that time this was part of the Virginia Conference. ↩
- There were four preaching places near the present site of Olive Branch Church at Gasburg, Woolsey’s Barn, Dromgoole’s, Mason’s, and the old Olive Branch. Olive Branch and Woolsey’s were used at the same time. (See Early’s Journal.) However, Woolsey’s and the others ceased to be preaching places; and Olive Branch, though it was moved, is said to be the descendant of the others. ↩