The history of the case, as gathered and reported by the committee appointed by the St. Louis Annual Conference, M. E. Church, South, will be found sufficiently full in the following statement of facts and report made by the committee to the Conference in 1868. The reader will appreciate the irony scattered here and there through the report if he can not excuse it. The material facts will be found without the publication of the correspondence to which the report refers. It should not be overlooked that the Northern Methodists took possession of the church at the same time they seized the parsonage, viz., in 1863.
“To the Bishop and Members of the St. Louis Conference:
“The committee to whom was referred the subject of your church property at Springfield, Mo., instructed to ‘take such measures as they may deem proper to recover the property,’ beg leave to submit the following
“Report.
“One member of your committee, R. P. Faulkner, residing at Arlington, Mo., and two members in St. Louis, and the property in question and parties holding it being at Springfield, Mo., we have had to labor at considerable disadvantage and loss of time owing to these distances.
“Yet we have endeavored to give the matter all the attention so important a trust deserved; and for the sake of common justice and our sacred Christianity we regret to state that our house of worship at Springfield is not yet in our possession.
“But we are happy to state that we have reason to believe we shall soon regain that which is justly our own.
“A part of your action on this subject at your last session was ‘that the Presiding Elder of the Springfield District should see that the Board of Trustees of our property at Springfield be immediately filled according to Discipline.’
“We take pleasure in stating that your instructions in this matter have been complied with by Rev. G. M. Winton, P. E., and the following named gentlemen appointed trustees: Lawson Fulbright, Elisha Headlee, Thomas W. Cunningham, Adam C. Mitchell and William Montgomery.
“Parsonage Property.—In the examination of this question we found that the house was taken possession of about the middle of the year 1863 by the authorities of the M. E. Church, under an idea that it would be destroyed as an enemy of the National Government if not protected by them; and subsequently held and used by them under the discovery that it was deeded to the M. E. Church—a Church without representative or existence in that part of Missouri at the date of said deed.