recommended
to the Conference, as before stated. The meeting was held in the school
house and convened on the 31st day of May, 1845. The members of the
Quarterly Conference were Rev. Wm. H. Sampson, Presiding Elder, Rev.
Joseph T. Lewis, Preacher, Rev. Silas Miller, Local Preacher, Francis M.
McCarty, Isaac Crofoot, Joseph Stowe, Charles Olmstead, D.C. Brooks,
Cornelius Davis, and myself.

The population of Fond du Lac proper, at the time of our first visit,
was very small. It contained seven buildings and numbered only five
families, including the family of the Presiding Elder. The school house
was the only public building, and for years was used for all public
meetings known to civilization. Subsequently this public convenience
fell a prey to the devouring element. The papers, in announcing the
fire, gravely enumerated the losses incurred by the disastrous
conflagration in this wise: "The Court House has been burned, every
church in the town has been consumed, and even the school house and all
the other public buildings have shared the same fate. There is no
insurance, and the loss cannot be less than two hundred dollars."

During the year an appointment was established at the residence of
Joseph Stowe, Esq., on the old military road, four miles west of Fond
du Lac.

To accommodate the settlement, now rapidly increasing in population,
Brother Stowe built a hall for public worship. Two square buildings were
erected at a suitable distance from each other, with an open court
between. Over this court, and extending from one building to the other,
and including the upper part of one of them, the hall was built, thus
furnishing an upper chamber. The hall was fitted up with seats and
formed a Chapel of no mean pretensions for that early period.

Brother Stowe's Chapel, as the place was sometimes called, soon became a
great institution in that region. A class was formed, and, under the
leadership of Isaac Crofoot, greatly flourished. A few years after, the
leadership passed to the hand of Ethiel Humiston. The members of this
class were Joseph Stowe, Priscilla Stowe, Isaac Crofoot, Ethiel
Humiston, Almira Humiston, Amos Lewis and Susan Lewis.

The class meetings, as well as the public services at this Chapel, now
became objects of general interest. Brother Humiston had been raised
under calvinistic teaching, and, until recently, had utterly failed to
discover "the way of Faith." But, coming to the light under the special