Mason County was one of the first fields occupied by the ministers who crossed the Alleghanies westward. Among these were G. W. Statton, J. Bachtel, and Moses Michael. However, prior to this, preaching had been kept up on the Virginia side by pastors of the Scioto Conference. The main one was Jonas Frownfelter, whose name deserves a place alongside the heroes enumerated in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. On one occasion, when the Ohio River was out of its banks, and too dangerous for the ferryman to venture across, he plunged in a little below the town of Syracuse, swam his horse across, and came out at Hartford City, a half mile below, singing like a conqueror:
“From every stormy wind that blows,
From every swelling tide of woes,
There is a calm, a sure retreat,” etc.
All honor to those who put their sweat, and tears, and blood into the foundations of the conference, thus enabling others to build safely and successfully.
Early in the fifties a paper known as the Virginia Telescope, was started in West Columbia, ostensibly in the interest of the whole Church, but later developments proved that the object was to organize a Southern United Brethren Church, making the slavery question the basis of the separation. When the presiding elder, G. W. Statton, became aware of its purpose, he threw his official influence against its continuance, and succeeded, by the aid of others, in eliminating it as a disturbing factor.
The reader will pardon me for taking up these early historical threads, woven long before my day as an itinerant, but I have done so with the view to preserving in permanent form interesting facts not generally known, and nowhere written into the history of the Church.
CHAPTER IV.
In March of 1878, the conference assembled in Grafton, with Bishop J. J. Glossbrenner as its presiding officer. At this session the brethren greatly surprised me by electing me one of the presiding elders. No thought of such a thing had ever entered my mind. I could not see the propriety of putting a young man, not yet twenty-seven, over men of age, ability, and experience, hence it was with no little diffidence that I accepted the West Columbia District, in the bounds of which I had already worked two years. The district contained only eleven charges, but these were widely scattered, embracing all or parts of Cabell, Mason, Jackson, Wood, Putnam, Kanawha, and Roane counties, and were as follows: Milton, Point Pleasant, Cross Creek, Thirteen, Jackson, Red House, Fair Plain, Sandy, New Haven, Wood, and Hartford City. Later, Walton was added.