These Storied Walls:
An Historical Sketch of
Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church, 1803-2003
by Clarence E. Horton Jr.
The Coming of the Methodists
The close of the eighteenth century was a time of vast change and movement. Scots-Irish and German settlers flocked from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and down the Great Wagon Road into the Carolina backcountry. Some came from South Carolina and Georgia, following roads through the Pee Dee-Yadkin basin. The Presbyterian and Lutheran Church (as well as the kindred German Reformed Church) were well established in western North Carolina, and the Baptists and Quakers had strong churches in some areas, but the Methodist itinerant preachers joyfully accepted the challenge of bringing the Gospel message to the wilderness settlements.
In 1778, the Roanoke, Tar River, and New Hope Circuits were formed from the original North Carolina Circuit of 1776. When Andrew Yeargan was sent into the valley of the Yadkin in 1780 to establish the work there, Cabarrus County had not yet been set off from Mecklenburg and Stanly County was a part of Montgomery; Davie and Davidson were still a part of Rowan County. The new Yadkin Circuit generally encompassed the entire State of North Carolina west of Guilford County.
By 1783, the Yadkin Circuit in 1780 had increased from 21 to 348 members and another circuit was needed. The Salisbury Circuit was formed with Beverly Allen, James Foster, and James Hinton as pastors. The new Circuit apparently included Rowan County (including those portions that became Iredell, Davie, and Davidson Counties); the part of Surry County which later became Stokes and Forsyth; and portions of Cabarrus, Randolph, and Montgomery lying west of the Uwharrie-Pee Dee River System. In 1789, Daniel Asbury and John McGee began the work of forming the Lincoln Circuit, which included portions of Burke, Rutherford, Lincoln, and Mecklenburg (including future Cabarrus) Counties in North Carolina; and portions of York, Spartanburg, and Union Districts in South Carolina.
The rivers which crossed North Carolina made east-west travel difficult, and settlers in Piedmont North Carolina found it easier to trade with neighbors in South Carolina and Virginia than with those in eastern North Carolina. Thus, from 1785 to 1800, Methodism rapidly spread from Charleston, South Carolina, into North Carolina's southern tier of counties. Territory east of the Pee Dee River was released to the North Carolina Conference in 1850; not until 1870 was the area west of the Pee Dee released by the South Carolina Conference. That territory included Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, Stanly, Anson and other counties.
It is difficult today to imagine the obstacles faced by the early frontier ministers. Most lived on fried bacon and corn bread, often eaten cold and in the saddle; they slept on dirt floors or on pine slabs if they were fortunate enough to find a friendly hearth. Many met them with dislike, some with outright abuse. Their numbers included frail, scholarly men who must have shuddered at the thought of the trackless wilderness before them. Yet it could be said of most of them, as Bishop Coke did of Hope Hull: "Mr. Hull is young, but is indeed a flame of fire. He appears always on the stretch for the salvation of souls."
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