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- 1880 (Creation)
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1-10000
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Administrative history
The Wesleyan Methodist Church of America emerged in response to the Methodist Episcopal Church's support of slavery and its centralized, authoritarian governance. In November 1842, leaders O. Scott, J. Horton, and L. R. Sunderland withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church and launched The True Wesleyan, a weekly publication explaining their reasons for separation. In December, Luther Lee and L. C. Matlack also withdrew, marking the formal beginning of the Wesleyan movement. Although earlier separations had occurred—particularly in Michigan, where a conference was established—these events laid the foundation for the official organization. The first church of the new denomination was founded in Providence, Rhode Island. In February 1843, a preliminary convention was held in Andover, Massachusetts, which led to a General Convention in Utica, New York, on May 31, 1843. There, the Wesleyan Methodist Church was officially organized and adopted a governing Discipline. The first General Conference convened in October 1844 to revise this Discipline, followed by a second in October 1848, which produced a more comprehensive and clearly organized version.
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This series comprises records from the North Carolina conference. They capture the district’s role as a vital regional hub within the wider church. The materials include minutes from district conferences, correspondence between local pastors and district leaders, reports from area churches, pastoral appointments, membership and financial statistics, and policy documents specific to the region.
These records reveal how the district guided and supported local congregations and clergy, implemented denominational policies on a regional level, and fostered church growth and ministry within the community.
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General note
At its annual session in Mesopotamia, Ohio, in September 1847, the Allegheny Conference received a request for a preacher from a group living in North Carolina. In 1847, Rev. Adam Crooks responded to a call for a preacher in North Carolina, where he organized churches despite intense opposition due to his antislavery stance. By 1848, eight churches with 140 members had been established in North Carolina and Virginia. He was joined by Rev. Jarvis C. Bacon and later Rev. Jesse McBride. All three faced arrests, mob violence, and threats for their work, especially due to accusations of inciting insurrection through antislavery preaching and literature. Despite trials and imprisonment, the ministers persisted until forced to leave the South around 1851.
Nearly six years later, Rev. Daniel Worth resumed the mission in North Carolina, finding diminished but still active Wesleyan congregations. He too faced fierce opposition and was jailed in 1859 for distributing antislavery books. After a harsh winter in prison, he was released and fled the state.As the Civil War approached, many Wesleyans fled the South, and most churches closed, though a few, like Freedom’s Hill, remained active.
The reviving of the work in North Carolina following the Civil War was undertaken by the Indiana Conference, in response to appeals from Wesleyan Methodists who had survived the war. In 1871 Rev. Lindsay Fisher returned from Indiana, where he had been at work as a minister, to his native state of North Carolina, and accompanied by Rev. Emsley Brookshire, also a native of North Carolina and a member of the Indiana Conference, began to gather the scattered remnants of churches together.
A convention held in the Shady Grove church in Guilford County, North Carolina, July 4, 1879, voted to send a petition to the General Conference of 1879, asking for the organization of an annual conference in North Carolina. The General Conference granted the petition and the first regular session of the conference convened in the Providence church, October 28, 1880. Rev. W. B. Richardson was elected president.
Due to the earnest evangelism and the aggressive planning of its leaders, the conference reached into Tennessee in earlier days and helped develop the work which later became the Tennessee Conference; and it developed a strong district in Virginia, including the work in Washington, D.C. Its territory also embraced two of the border counties in upper South Carolina where it established growing churches.
In 1959, it gave birth to a new conference, the old district in Virginia becoming the new Virginia Conference, with twenty-six organized churches and 1,202 total membership.
North Carolina Conference in 1968 showed ninety-two organized churches and 6,340 total membership.
General note
North Carolina Conference Presidents:
David C. Linville, 1879-80, 1881-84
W. B. Richardson, 1880-81, 1884-85
J. C. Johnson, 1885-88
T. F. Sechrest, 1888-91
Luther L. Folger, 1891-95, 1901-05
W. W. Cude, 1895-1901
I. 0 . Gray, 1905-06
H. W. Hawkins , 1906-09, 1910-15
B. L. Padgett, 1909-10
John A. Clement, 1915-19, 1925-29 , 1933-37
Edward M. Graham , 1919-25
W. C. Lovin, 1929-33, 1946-48
E. L. Henderson, 1937-44, 1950-53
J. A. Wood , 1944-46
Lyman F. Lance, 1948-50
Bernard H. Phaup, 1953-59
C. Wesley Lovin, 1959-63
Dewey 0. Miller, 1963-68