first church organized under the American rule. It was located on the south branch of Coles's Creek, ten miles from the present site of the town of Fayette, in Jefferson County. The house of worship has disappeared, but the graveyard is preserved, and on the gravestones are inscribed the names of many pioneers of religion and influence. At the date of the organization of this church Mr. Curtis was the only minister of any Protestant denomination in the territory. He died in 1818, at an advanced age, in Amite County, Mississippi.

The next minister of the Gospel who arrived in the province was the Rev. Tobias Gibson, who arrived in April, 1799, and in 1800 organized a Methodist Church at Washington, the seat of the territorial government, six miles east of Natchez. In 1804 he died, and was buried near Warrenton, below Vicksburg, and a suitable monument marked his grave. Who can enumerate the descendants of the Gibsons?

The Presbyterian Church was the next to enter the field. It was by a missionary enterprise of the Synod of North Carolina, the jurisdiction of which extended at that time over the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. But the charter granted by the British government included within Georgia all the territory west of the present limits of that State to the Mississippi River, constituting the present States of Alabama and Mississippi. After Georgia, in 1803, relinquished this territory to the Federal government, the Synod of Carolina continued for many years to be the nearest Presbyterial jurisdiction. On the establishment of American civil authority over the Mississippi Territory, in 1798, it naturally came under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Synod of Carolina; and that Synod immediately adopted efficient measures to send the Gospel and plant the Church in it.

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The mode of conducting domestic missions at that day seems to have been derived from the Kirk of Scotland, under the idea that it was the development of the divinely-appointed system of church government, without any addition of human inventions. It was practiced by the Presbyterian Church from its earliest. planting on the American continent, and continued to be practiced for many years, until it was modified, and to some extent superseded, by innovations derived from the plan of union with the Congregational Church, in the form of voluntary societies and ecclesiastical boards. The old plan was for the Church to conduct her missions through the immediate agency of her own divinely ordained courts, which appointed the missionaries, and provided for their support.

REV. JAMES SMYLIE.

THE Second Presbyterian minister who settled permanently in the Southwest, was Rev. James Smylie. He was born in North Carolina, of highland Scotch parentage, about the year 1780. He received his classical and theological education at Guildford, under the Rev. Dr. Caldwell; and was licensed and ordained by the Orange Presbytery. In 1805, soon after he was ordained, he was sent by the Synod of North Carolina, as a missionary, to the Territory of Mississippi. He settled at Washington, the capital of the Territory, and took charge of the church gathered by the missionary who preceded him. In 1811 Mr. Smylie removed to Amite County, and engaged actively in the work of the ministry in that region. He organized a number of churches in that section of Mississippi and the contiguous parishes of Louisiana. He planted Christianity and Presbyterianism over a wide extent of country, and greatly elevated the standard of education. Many of his

scholars became leading men. In 1814 he traveled on horseback, through the Choctaw and Chicasaw nations, to Tennessee, to attend a meeting of the West Tennessee Presbytery, in order to get that Presbytery to petition the Synod of Kentucky for the creation of a new Presbytery for the Southwest. The Synod, at their sessions in 1815, granted the petition, and erected the new Presbytery of Mississippi, with jurisdiction from Perdido indefinitely westward. Their first act, after organizing, was to pass a vote of thanks to Mr. Smylie for procuring the organization. Their second act was to elect him as their stated clerk, which office he filled with great acceptance, until the division of the body into the three Presbyteries of Mississippi, Clinton, and Amite, and he fell into the bounds of the latter body.

When the storm of abolitionism arose, and swept with the violence of a hurricane over the country, he was one of the first men to oppose it. He prepared a sermon giving the Scriptural views on the subject, and preached it extensively over the country. In 1836 the Presbytery of Chilicothe addressed a violent abolition letter to the Presbytery of Mississippi. This letter Mr. Smylie answered, and published his answer in a pamphlet. The pamphlet was extensively circulated, and the whole question of domestic slavery was universally agitated, and influenced the legislation of the country. It was regarded as a sort of text-book on the subject, and exerted a large influence in shaping the subsequent course of the South both in Church and State.

In his old age he devoted his time exclusively to the instruction of the negroes. He collected large congregations of them. In addition to his preaching to them, and expounding to them the Holy Scriptures, he taught them the larger and shorter catechisms, and large classes of them could repeat the whole of these formu

laries by memory. He was earnest and bold in preaching before his brethren in the ministry, and the masters and owners of negroes, the paramount duty of imparting to them religious instruction. He had an acute and original mind, and was a close observer and careful thinker. He was an accurate Latin and Greek scholar, a profound theologian, and a thorough Calvinist. His sermons were remarkable for their great simplicity and perspicuity, and were always listened to with attention and interest. He was thoroughly versed in all the business of the Church; and in ecclesiastical courts his views generally prevailed. In private life he was remarkable for candor, integrity, and truth. He had wonderful power in conciliating and pleasing those with whom he had intercourse, and his great business habits gave him great weight of character. His word, on any subject, was regarded as settling the question. He was thrice married, and left one child by each marriage-a daughter and two sons—all of whom are married, and have large families. He died in 1853, aged seventy-three years. He left many valuable manuscripts behind him, but, by a strange misunderstanding among his family and friends, nothing has ever yet seen the light, excepting "Smylie on Slavery."

The third Presbyterian minister who permanently settled in the Southwest was the Rev. Jacob Rickhow, who was born in 1768, on Staten Island, N. Y. His parents were the earliest settlers of the place; his father of a Dutch, and his mother of an English family. He was often heard to speak of the impression made on his mind, when only eight years old, by witnessing a skirmish between some British and American troops, at Perth Amboy. He had not the advantage of a collegiate or classical education. When he was between twentyone and twenty-four years of age he began to preach in

connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was ordained to the work of the ministry by Bishop Asbury. In 1808 he and another minister were received into the Presbytery of New Brunswick. Arriving in Natchez in June following, he there opened a school, and preached to a little flock of Presbyterians. In 1801 he one day met, in Natchez, with Mr. Dugald Torrey, who invited him to send an appointment to the Scotch settlement of Presbyterians in the adjoining county of Jefferson. He complied with the request, and kept up a stated monthly appointment in connection with his Natches labors, some thirty miles distant. A temporary bush arbor was erected, which was soon supplanted by a log house of worship. A considerable congregation was collected, a ruling elder elected, and the church was named Ebenezer, by which it is called to this day. In 1814 he removed to a farm in the vicinity of Port Gibson, where he remained until the death of his wife, which occurred but a few years before his own death. In 1817 he was appointed, by the General Assembly, itinerant missionary to Amite County and the neighboring parishes of Louisiana. At a later day he became the great missionary to the Piny Woods counties of Eastern Mississippi, in the region of Pearl River. Then you saw him in all his glory. In the hot days of August, he was mounted on his gray mare, with solemn pace traversing those long stretches through the piny woods, and with his reproving frown, curbing those young blades that accompanied him, Chamberlain, Helme, Butler, and Hutchison! He had the true spirit of a pioneer preacher. The Piny Woods churches seemed to belong to him. No sacramental meeting, or baptism of a child, seemed to be right without his presence. He was indefatigable in his long journeys on horseback, and in his old age enduring the fatigue of all weathers