OUR LEGACY FROM THE PAST - NCCUMC

75
Excerpt from RECOLLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS by
Reverend L. L. Nash
Leonidas L. Nash entered the ministry in 1872while living in
Halifax County. He came to Williamston and served as pastor of
the First United Methodist Church from 1875-1877.In 1916, he
wrote the book RECOLLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS about
his forty-three years of ministry. The following excerpt describes
his pastorate while in Williamston.
CHAPTER I!.
THE WILLIAMSTON CIRCUIT
I was sent to the Williamston Circuit from the Wilmington
Conference. I reached my work very soon after Conference, and
found quite a hard field, and much work to do. The old Williamston
Circuit had been divided, but I had the following appointments:
Williamston, Hamilton, Scotland Neck, Palmyra, Jone's Chapel,
William's Chapel and Holly Springs. The circuit was forty miles
long, and most of the appointments were on the Roanoke River.
I held revival meetings at every appointment on the circuit,
and had some success at every place. I held a meeting at a school
house, a few miles below Williamston, where we had fifty accessions
to the Church, and organized a church that was called
Siloam. The county (Martin) was largely dominated by the
Primitive Baptists, and the people were not generally favorable to
Methodism, and did not believe in revival meetings. Nothing very
remarkable occurred this year on the circuit.
The Conference met in Greensboro, in December, 1876,
Bishop H. H. Kavanaugh presided. I was received into full connection,
and ordained a deacon at this Conference. Bishop
Kavanaugh preached a Thanksgiving sermon that was one of the
finest efforts ever heard by the North Carolina Conference. No one
who heard the sermon will ever forget it. The Bishop seemed to
hypnotize his audience. I suppose I was completely under the spell
of his magnetic eloquence as anybody; but I was sitting by the
Rev. John W. Lewis, one of our old preachers, and Dr. Closs was
sitting in the chancel, looking up at the Bishop, with his head
turned to one side, and tears running across his nose. Brother