October 10, 1806 — to Henry Smith

Henry Smith was on the Baltimore Circuit. Asbury needed him in South Carolina and thought he was doing him a favor to ask him to come. However, Smith thought differently according to his entry in his Recollections. Joshua Wells went to Wilmington. Smith was changed to Fells Point Circuit in the Baltimore District. WAXSAWS, S.C.

October 10, 1806

[TO HENRY SMITH]

My dear Son:

Grace and peace attend thy spirit. I was musing in my mind yesterday, when feeling so troubled for the South Carolina Conference, with all that impartiality that becomes a general superintendent of seven annual conferences. It suddenly sprung up in my mind to write to Henry Smith to come with all haste to Charleston, if possible, by the first or middle of December. Immediately I write, and do not confer with flesh and blood. Our fields in this conference are white for harvest. The laborers are faint and few. Not that I would call preachers from other conferences, supposing the natives of that state were not competent, if we had them; or [willingly] invite men to come so far. Your rheumatick affliction may meet with a cure in one year or nine months in Charleston. Preachers do not enter, nor continue in the work here, as in the middle conferences, to marry is to locate! The people are short lived, we must make haste to save them. In Charleston we have one thousand members. They have souls. 3000 steady Sabbath hearers, that change, perhaps, to 15 or 20,000, in the whole year. I advise you to sell your horse, or lend him to a preacher, if you cannot sell. You will take the mail stage, and come in haste; (the King’s business requireth haste). But, after all, if you feel any insurmountable difficulties in your way, or stubborn objections, I deal not in imperious commands. I must do the best I can with the strength we have. With the same post, a letter accompanies yours to Joshua Wells. If you can meet him in Baltimore, you can come together to Fayetteville.¹ Then he [Wells] will turn off to Wilmington.

As to the expenses of your passage, I shall desire the stewards to pay the whole. We have two meeting-houses, 60 by 40 feet each. We have a dwelling-house in the suburbs of the city. Two rooms, one above and one below, for each preacher, and anything that you will need; and as wicked a city as any in America. But Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. I have visited that place, and stayed for days and nights among boarders, as wicked as fiends. Now I have provided a house for my children. I cannot as long as I superintend, which may not be long, see any part of the work suffer, if there is help to be had. Your age, your steady mind, and your not being incumbered, at present, have moved me. I have had an awful summer for heat and ill health; but a blessed conference. Good news from the Missionaries, added between 1300 or 1400 in the Western Conference, all union and love. Brother Watson² or some preacher will supply your place. You will write to me at Sparta, Hancock county, Georgia, if possible, before the conference rises, that I may know what to do with the stations, when I know whether you can come or not.³ I have just escaped from the mountains; I have rode rapidly; and can hardly find a place to sit down without the bawling of children. Night comes on; and I close with saying, preach sanctification, directly and indirectly, in every discourse. My love to all the brethren. I am as ever, your father and friend,

F. ASBURY

P.S. I shall only observe, that Baltimore Conference has about 18,000 members of society; South Carolina 12,000. I doubt if we shall be able to send out 40 travelling preachers from the south. Baltimore has about sixty, besides local men. We shall in the south meet in time, the brethren in the west, and take South America, and all the Floridas, French and Spanish, if the work goes on. Farewell.

F.A.

Methodist Historical Society of the Baltimore Conference (Lovely Lane Museum)