Patient in life, he was triumphant in death, and though there was no
exultant notes in his last testimony, his faith stood the supreme
test, as he drew near the borderland. He died on September 8th, 1834,
aged 74 years. The remains of Mary and William Black rest in the old
graveyard at Grafton Street Methodist Church, Halifax, and near the
vestry door are their tombstones and those of their children. Within
the church there are marble tablets to the memory of these pioneers
of the faith, who laid the foundations of Methodism in the maritime
provinces, and in the Methodist Church at Amherst, Nova Scotia, there
is a memorial window to the founder of Methodism in these parts.

There is a larger and more abiding memorial of the heroic figure who
trudged over the country in quest of souls, and that lies in the
silent influence of his life, and the permanence of his work. He was a
great revivalist of the enduring kind, whose exhortations were not
platitudes which spent themselves with the passing hour, but, being
based on the leading doctrines of the Bible, remained as a spiritual
impulse for the individual, and the church. In his History of the
Methodist Church in Eastern British America, T. Watson Smith quotes a
characteristic sketch of William Black and his wife.

"The personal appearance of 'Bishop' Black in his late years, says the
Hon. S. L. Shannon, who remembers him well, was very prepossessing. He
was of medium height, inclining to corpulency. In the street he always
wore the well-known clerical hat; a black dress coat buttoned over a
double-breasted vest, a white neckerchief, black small clothes and
well polished Hessian boots completed his attire. When he and his good
lady, who was always dressed in the neatest Quaker costume, used to
take their airing in the summer with black Thomas, the bishop's well
known servant, for their charioteer, they were absolutely pictures
worth looking at. In the pulpit the bishop's appearance was truly
apostolical. A round, rosy face, encircled with thin, white hair, a
benevolent smile, and a sweet voice were most attractive. Whenever my
mind carries me back to those scenes, the vision of the apostle John
in his old age addressing the church at Ephesus as his little
children, comes up before me as I think of the good old man, the real
father of Methodism in Halifax."

When William Black was converted and began his career as the pioneer
Methodist preacher in the maritime provinces,