By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
The Methodist Church leadership called them “traveling” clergy. They traveled on horseback, usually with a simple handbag and of course, a well-used Bible. They often navigated rough terrain, both hilly and over creeks and valleys with thick undergrowth, as well as less challenging landscapes as they moved from area to area.
They were popularly called “circuit riders” or “saddlebag preachers,” and were quite common in America in the 18th and 19th centuries, though were pretty much gone before the Civil War.
Circuit rider sketch (Edward Egglestrom)
And though there are plenty of accounts of other religious groups having their own versions of the intriguing itinerant ministry, the Wikipedia entry, Circuit Rider (religious) gave references that the “ministerial activity of the circuit riders boosted Methodism into the largest Protestant denomination at the time…(and in) 1784, there were 14,986 members and 83 traveling preachers. By 1839, the denomination had grown to 749,216 members served by 3,557 traveling preachers and 5,856 local preachers.”
The wilderness of Kentucky produced its own circuit rider extraordinaire by the name of Peter Cartwright. Though born in Virginia, his family moved through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky when he was a child, where they settled in Logan County in 1793.
According to Alexandra Lee, who reviewed the book, The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (1856), “Cartwright himself had been a bad boy in his teens, giving to drinking, playing cards, and dancing; but he had a Methodist praying mother. Thanks to her prayers and the happenstance of the Cane Ridge or Western Revival, he was born again, joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and before age twenty began riding a circuit as a Methodist Episcopal preacher, in and around the Cumberland.”
He moved with his family to Livingston County in 1802, and after a short stint at Brown’s Academy (couldn’t find references about the school), the impassioned Cartwright started the Livingston preaching circuit and soon afterward, the Red River circuit, which he traveled for three months.
Cartwright became known as “Kentucky Boy,” though he did not spend his entire traveling ministry in the state. The Kentucky Encyclopedia referred to him as “a powerful speaker and a popular figure on the circuits.”
He was known to preach for three hours at a time, championed Methodist colleges, and deposited religious literature wherever he traveled. He sometimes had little food to eat in a time that traveling clergy made only $30 to $50 per year. He endured, also, the tragedy of losing a daughter when a tree fell on her.
He believed in the dignity of all. Finding much pushback from his anti-slavery sentiments as a presiding elder for the Methodist Church, Cartwright asked to be transferred to Illinois, where he served two terms in the Illinois legislature, elected in 1828 and 1832. In a huge irony, he defeated none other than native Kentuckian and future United States president Abraham Lincoln for the seat in 1832.
Reports show that Lincoln and Cartwright had an often contentious public relationship over many years in their time living in Illinois.
Said historian Douglas L. Wilson: “Cartwright was the foremost Methodist circuit rider in pioneer Illinois. In a fearless frontier ministry, preaching the gospel to a far-flung constituency unreached and unreachable by a conventional college-trained minister, Cartwright was a legend in his time. A powerful man who could not be intimidated by frontier roughs and who could intimidate those who opposed him, Cartwright had engaged his conspicuous talents as a speaker and activist as freely as in religion.”
Cartwright likened his gospel preaching to “lighting a match.” According to a Ft. Campbell newspaper, The Leaf Chronicle, the dynamic circuit rider “lit more than 10,000 matches” and “was largely responsible for the spread of Methodism in the western world.”
And though it might be a difficult argument to prove in terms of numbers, Cartwright, and others similar, may have had a positive role on the law-abiding behavior of people living in early frontier Kentucky and across early America, where government law enforcement and formal education were often limited because of geographical isolation.
Sources for the article:
https://truthseekerkae.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/peter-cartwright-methodist-circuit-riding-preacher/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_rider_(religious)
http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/the-preachers/peter-cartwright/
The Kentucky Encyclopedia. (University Press of Kentucky, 1992)
http://www.francisasburysociety.com/
Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of six books: a biography of former Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and five in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #4,” was released in 2015. Steve is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, a weekly NKyTribune columnist and a member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or visit his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.” (Steve’s photo by Connie McDonald)
