hem commenced to sing, all the
others should join, the plan worked very well. After the singing each
class took up the thread where it had been dropped, and proceeded with
the service. Usually the Pastor sat in the Altar to give the responses
to the exercises of each as they seemed to require them. Sometimes not a
little confusion occurred, but it was taken in good feeling by all, and
the meetings were profitable.

We also organized meetings outside of the village. School houses and
private dwellings were used for this purpose, and these meetings not
only accommodated the people of the several neighborhoods adjacent to
the village, but gave the needed religious employment to the Local
Preachers and other members of the Church. The meetings were held in the
afternoons of the Sabbath, and sometimes, to hold the plan in
countenance, the Pastor himself would go out and deliver a sermon. At
first it was feared by some of the good brethren that these side
meetings would detract from the regular services of the Church, but the
result proved that, on the contrary, they gave an increase of both
interest and attendance. For the people, thus edified and interested,
came into the village and thronged the Church.

But the year was now drawing to a close. By request of the preceding
Conference, the Conference session had been changed to spring. The year
had been one of severe labor, but its compensations were abundant. I was
able to report a membership, including probationers, of three hundred
and six. Two events in my own family clothed the year with special
interest. The one, the conversion of our eldest daughter, then nine
years old, and her reception into the church, the other, the birth of
our son. They were both occasions of devout thanksgiving to God.

During this year I made a visit to Evansville, a charge that seems to
hold a central position in the Conference west of Janesville. The first
settlement was made in this vicinity in the fall of 1839, when six
families came into what was then called the town of Union. These early
settlers were Rev. Boyd Phelps, Rev. Stephen Jones, Erastus Quivey,
Samuel Lewis, Charles McMillin, and John Rhineheart. During the winter
and spring religious meetings were established in private houses, Rev.
Boyd Phelps preaching the first sermon. In the following spring and
summer, the settlement was enlarged by the arrival of Ira Jones, Jacob
West, John T. Baker, Rev. John Griffith, Hiram Griffith,