“Prominent in early Methodism in southern Indiana was Jonathan J. Jaquess, who came to Indiana from Kentucky in 1815. He was born in New Jersey in 1753 and served in the American Revolution under Colonel Sheldon, commander of the 7 th New Jersey Regiment, afterwards known as the Light Horse Brigade. He moved to Kentucky, settling near Cynthiana, and in September, 1815, with his family, wife and nine children: Garreston, George, John Wesley, Ogden, Fletcher, Asbury, Elizabeth, Permelia and Rebecia (sic), together with other relatives came to Indiana
and settled in Posey County…” A Church in the Wilderness
In 1800, the national census showed Ohio to have 45,356 residents and the population of Kentucky had reached 220,955. But Indiana was little more than a wilderness and could boast of a total population of only 2,517. A history of the Indiana Conference (Indiana Conference of the Methodist Church by Herbert L. Heller) states that in 1808 the Western Conference was reorganized and a new District was formed, known as the Indiana District. This placed the name “Indiana” on the Methodist Church records for the first time. Early Methodist meetings were around the Charlestown, Indiana, area but by 1814 Circuit Riders were traveling throughout all of the Wabash and Ohio River country of southern Indiana. An indication of the wilderness condition can be noted by action take at the second Illinois Conference session, which met at Charlestown in 1825. The Indiana circuits were still a part of the Illinois and Missouri Conferences. “The 1825 Conference was not a lengthy session and was marked by the usual affairs except for the approval of an agreement entered into by Jesse Walker and the chiefs of the Pottawatomie Indians, permitting him to engage in missionary work among them” (from Indiana Conference of the Methodist Church). It should be noted that the first session of the Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was held in the Wesley Chapel M.E. Church at New Albany in October of 1832. Of special interest is that this church had been founded in 1817 by Reverend John Schrader, an early minister of St. Paul’s Church, about which more will be said later. In this Indiana wilderness several settlements began to take shape. In this area of Posey County a community called Goshen was developed on a section of land near where the Dr. Paul Boren now lives. It was a community patterned after the “group living” of the Rappite community of New Harmony. The common goal was the growing of produce, which was to be shipped by river flat boat to the city of St. Louis and points south. The loss of one summer’s crop when a flat boat broke up south of St. Louis also broke the economy of the Goshen community and the people went back to their own farm
St. Paul’s UMC History
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