If protection to church property required that Hunter and Strother should be put into this Board of Trustees, the Church, by means of its preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference, had full power to put them there to fill vacancies without action of the court below, provided vacancies existed. The church law on the subject of appointing a Board of Church Trustees and filling vacancies therein is found on page 254 of a book entitled “The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.” It is a book of universal authority in that Church, as we all know, and was largely referred to by all parties to this contest on the trial in the court below, as is fully shown by the Bill of Exceptions. At page 254 I find the following plain and simple provision:
“In the appointment of Trustees, except where the laws of the State or Territory provide differently, the preacher in charge, or in his absence the Presiding Elder, shall have the right of nomination, subject to the confirmation or rejection of the Quarterly Conference. All vacancies in the Board of Trustees occasioned by death, separation from our Church, or otherwise, shall be filled without delay.”
This, then, is full and clear, and confers ample authority upon the preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference to appoint trustees for the Church and to fill vacancies without the aid or interference of the temporal courts. It is the identical same provision of the “discipline” under and by virtue of which Draper, Markley and all the other trustees of that church were themselves appointed. They were appointed under and by force of this provision long before the date of the deed of McQuie and wife to them in trust for the Church. McQuie and wife did not appoint them. They—McQuie and wife—had agreed to convey to the Church at Louisiana certain ground for a certain money consideration paid to them by the Church, and were directed by the Church to convey, and did convey, to its board of trustees then existing. As the ground was purchased from McQuie and wife, and full value received for the same, therefore McQuie and wife had no right to appoint the trustees, as they would have had if they had donated and given the lots. The Church having purchased and paid for this ground, had the sole right to say to whom it should be conveyed. If the Church had the exclusive right then to say who should hold its property in trust for it, surely it has that right now. But the Court below has destroyed that right by placing in the Board of Trustees two men—Hunter and Strother—whom the Church did not select in its appointed way, or in any other way, and by vesting in them the legal title to its property without its consent, and perhaps against its will. Against Messrs. Hunter and Strother I have nothing to say; but there is not the slightest evidence on the record, or anywhere else, to show that the Church at Louisiana is pleased with them or desired their services in the Board.
But the Church, through its preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference, as we have seen, not only had power to appoint trustees and to fill vacancies in the Board when vacancies existed, but I now proceed to show that it actually did fill said vacancies—the identical same vacancies stated in this ex parte petition to have existed at the time of the filing thereof—by appointing said William A. Gunn to fill the vacancy created by the death of said Watson, and by appointing said Samuel S. Allen to fill the vacancy created by said Stokes ceasing to be a member of the Church and leaving the State. To prove this fact I beg to be permitted to read to this Court so much of the minutes of said Quarterly Conference as may be necessary, and which was copied into the bill of exceptions from the minutes themselves, and proves the fact beyond all doubt, and is as follows:
“On motion of Brother Newland, preacher in charge of this (Louisiana) Station, Brother W. A. Gunn was nominated and confirmed as trustee in place of Bro. David Watson, deceased.”
Immediately following the above evidence in the bill of exceptions I will read further evidence in these words:
“The proceedings of said Quarterly Conference, of which the above is part, was had on the 21st day of January, A. D., 1861, and are signed by B. H. Spencer, presiding elder, and attested by William A. Gunn, secretary.”
Surely the minutes of the Quarterly Conference is the best evidence of what it did. The minutes thus authenticated by Spencer and Gunn are as conclusive in fact as they are valid in law, and do show that the Watson vacancy was duly filled by said preacher and Conference just one year, five months and fifteen days before the filing of the ex parte petition herein. With this evidence before him can any man believe, or can any court decide, that the Watson vacancy existed in the Board of Trustees when the petition of Draper & Co. was filed? Surely not. Then what right had the Court below to fill a pretended vacancy that in fact and law did not exist? Certainly none at all.
I now proceed to show that the Stokes vacancy was also a mere pretense, and did not exist in the Board when this petition was filed, having been filled by the preacher in charge and Quarterly Conference in like manner long before this petition was filed by Draper and others in the court below. The evidence to prove this fact is equally clear and conclusive. I will read to the court from the Bill of Exceptions, in these words:
“The petitioners also offered and read in evidence another portion of said minutes, proving that on the 23d day of April, A. D. 1862, and at said Conference, the Rev. G. W. Miller, then preacher in charge of said Louisiana Station, nominated Bro. Samuel S. Allen as trustee, to fill the vacancy created by the withdrawal from the church of Thomas T. Stokes; and proving, also, that said nomination was confirmed by said Quarterly Conference on the same day.”