owing to the few facilities for obtaining one afforded by their wilderness location.

"Accompanied by his younger and only brother, Philip,-who subsequently became eminent in Virginia as a lawyer and legislator, dying, while a member of Congress, in Washington City, in 1833,-he entered Jefferson Academy, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, they being among the first students at that pioneer literary institution, in what was at that period, in the transmontane States, denominated the Far West.'

"The Wesleyans having now laid aside the Prayer-Book or ritual enjoined to be used on occasions of public worship by the founder of their society, the Rev. John Wesley,-a formula which Dr. Doddridge's judg ment sanctioned as being not only beautifully appropriate but highly edifying, he did not therefore resume his connection with them after his return from college, but diligently applied himself to an examination of the claims of the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which his parents had been members prior to their removal to the West. Suffice it to say, this

examination resulted in a determination to offer himself a candidate for Orders in that Church. Early in the year 1792, he received ordination at the hands of the Right Rev. William White, of Philadelphia, soon after which he located temporarily in Western Pennsylvania, but in the course of a few years settled permanently in Charlestown, now Wellsburg, in Brooke county, Virginia.

"At this early period of the settlement of the country, the greater portion of the population of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania consisted of emigrants from Maryland and Virginia, where many of them had been attached to the Mother-Church; hence the advent of a preacher of their own denomination was hailed by them as an auspicious event, filling their hearts with gladness. He was everywhere greeted with kindness, cheered and encouraged in his labours by the presence of large and attentive congregations; albeit in most places where they assembled for public worship their only canopy was the umbrageous trees of the unbroken forest, whose solemn silence was, for the time-being, rendered vocal by their devotions. "During the year 1793, I occasionally attended the ministrations of this zealous advocate for the cause of Christ, at West Liberty, then the seat of justice for Ohio county, Virginia, and the residence of many respectable and influential families. At this place divine service was held in the court-house. Although still a young man, Dr. Doddridge was an able minister of the New Covenant. When preaching, there was nothing either in his language or manner that savoured of pedantry or awkwardness; yet he did not possess that easy graceful action which is often met with in speakers in every other respect his inferiors; but this apparent defect was more than compensated by the arrangement of his subject, the purity of his style, the selection and appropriateness of his figures, and the substance of his discourses. He was always listened to with pleasure and edification, commanding the attention of his hearers not so much by brilliant flights of imagination and rhetorical flourishes, as by the solidity of his arguments and his lucid exhibition of the important truths which he presented for their deliberate consideration.

"In person he was tall and well proportioned, walking very erect. He possessed fine colloquial powers, was social, an agreeable companion, and highly esteemed by those who knew him on account of his plain, unostentatious manners, courteous demeanour, and rigid devotion to duty.

"The first Episcopal church in Western Virginia, if I remember rightly,

called St. John's, was erected in 1792-93, in a country parish, a few miles distant from the residence of Dr. Doddridge, whose pastoral connections with it, I have been informed, continued for nearly thirty years, when declining health compelled him to dissolve it. At no great distance from St. John's, and occupied by the same pastor, another edifice, also in Virginia, was erected at a very early period, the name of which I cannot now recollect.

"In the course of a few years after he took up his abode in Virginia, many families reared in the Episcopal Church removed from the older States and settled west of the Ohio River, where they were as sheep in a wilderness without a shepherd. To those of them within a convenient distance from his residence he made frequent visitations, holding service in temples not made with hands but by the Great Architect of nature.

"We have been credibly informed that Dr. Doddridge was the first Christian minister who proclaimed the Gospel of salvation in the now flourishing town of Steubenville, in this State, and that some years previous to the close of the last century he officiated there monthly, the place at that time containing but a few log cabins and a portion of Fort Steuben.'

"The parish of St. James, on Cross Creek, in Jefferson county, was early formed by him, and was for many years under his pastoral charge. At St. Clairsville, Belmont county, he had a congregation and church, the pulpit of which he occupied from time to time until another pastor could be obtained. Occasionally his missionary excursions included Morristown, Cambridge, and Zanesville.

"In the autumn of 1815, this untiring apostle of the Church, with a view of preparing the way for future missionaries, made a tour through part of Ohio, coming as far west as this city,-Chillicothe, preaching in the intermediate towns and ascertaining where Episcopal services would be acceptable. He was, I think, the first regularly-ordained clergyman of that Church who officiated in our place, which he did several times during his stay among us.

"In Virginia at a very early period he held religious services at Charlestown, Grave Creek, and Wheeling. At the latter place was quite a number of Episcopalians, whom he frequently visited, keeping them together until the arrival of that pious and devoted servant of God, the Rev. John Armstrong, their first resident pastor.

"From the time of his ordination, he made it a practice to visit and preach wherever he could find a few who desired to be instructed in the faith of their fathers. These efforts to collect and keep within the fold of the Church the scattered sheep of the flock imposed upon him the necessity of traversing a wide extent of country, which, being but sparsely settled, was poorly provided with roads; consequently, all his journeys had to be performed on horseback.

"In labours this Christian minister was most abundant, sustained under their performance by the approbation of his own conscience and the longdeferred hope that the time was not far distant when Episcopalians in the Atlantic States-to whom, through letters to several of their Bishops and otherwise, he made request and earnest appeals in behalf of a field already white for the harvest-would awake from their apathy to a lively consciousness of the imperative duty of making the long-neglected West a heatre for missionary exertion.

"Some years subsequent to his entrance into the ministry of the Pro

testant Episcopal Church, he found it necessary, in order to meet the wants of an increasing family, to combine with his clerical profession one that would be more lucrative in a new and sparsely-settled country: he accordingly studied medicine, completing his course under Dr. Benjamin Rush, in the Medical Institute of Philadelphia. To the avails of the latter profession he was mainly indebted for means to rear and educate a large family of children.

"His life was one of close application and incessant toil; but his health eventually failed, and an asthmatic disease, with which in his later years he was sorely afflicted, in a great measure impaired his ability for usefulness. In the fall of 1824 he attended a Convention of his Church holden in this city, but he appeared greatly enfeebled. In the course of the succeeding summer, he spent some weeks here in the family of a beloved sister, Mrs. N. Reeves, hoping, though vainly, that a cessation from labour, change of air and scene, would in some measure renovate his exhausted energies. During this period the friendship of our youthful days and the remembrance of former years revived. He often visited me at my own domicile, where we held free converse and communion together, and I found him the same cheerful, agrecable companion as in days lang syne.' Nothing ever occurred to mar our friendly intercourse or to diminish our kindly regards for each other. But he is taken from our midst; his disencumbered spirit has been called to its reward by the Great Head of the Church.

"Finding that neither travelling nor rest availed to arrest the progress of disease, my friend returned to his home and family in Virginia, as he emphatically said, 'to die among his own people.' He lingered in much bodily affliction till November, 1826, when, strong in the faith which he had preached, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, his sufferings were terminated by death, to him a most welcome messenger.

"Of the published writings of the Rev. Dr. Doddridge, his Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars, together with a View of the State of Society, Manners, Customs, &c., of the Early Settlers of the Western Country,' is the principal.

"This graphic picture of pioneer scenes, manners, customs, and events, is peculiarly interesting as well as valuable on account of its fidelity, -it being the result of the writer's personal experience and observation. The work was undertaken by its author not only for the purpose of preserving the facts therein recorded, but also with a view of enabling those who come after him properly to estimate the advantages of position in a civilized and refined state of society, by contrasting them with those possessed by their forefathers in the Western regions. THOMAS SCOTT.

"CHILLICOTHE, ROSS COUNTY, OHIO, June 25, 1855."

To the foregoing we add a few things which we received from those who knew him as the minister in Brooke county. He preached at four places in that county, two of which are now occupied by Presbyterians and Methodists. The other two were Wellsburg and the neighbourhood where St. John's Church now stands. Although he was followed by that most zealous and popular man, the Rev. Mr. Armstrong, still it was found impracticable to sustain congregations in all of them. Dr. Doddridge died in the year

1826, in his fifty-eighth year. He was buried in a vault under his own house, near Wellsburg, but afterward removed to a public burying-ground.

The Rev. Mr. Armstrong, from Wheeling, preached much and zealously to the congregations after Dr. Doddridge's death, as did also his son at a subsequent period. The Rev. Mr. Wheat, of Wheeling, who was the immediate successor of the elder Armstrong, also laboured for them. After some time, the Rev. Mr. Skull was sent as a missionary to Brooke county. He was followed by the Rev. Mr. Harrison in the same capacity. The Revs. Mr. Goodwin, Hyland, and Tompkins followed in succession. The Rev. Mr. Christian is the present minister. During the intervals of ministerial supply, which have been very considerable, the Rev. Dr. Morse, of Steubenville, Ohio, has most kindly and laboriously served the people of St. John's, for which he is most justly very dear to them. Three churches have been put up in St. John's parish on the same site,-the first of log, the second of framework, and the last of brick,—the last being consecrated in 1850. There has always been a considerable congregation at St. John's, and I have ever been delighted to find myself in the midst of that plain, unpretending, hospitable, and zealous congregation of people, devoted to the true principles of the Gospel and worship of our Church.

In Wellsburg, which is about seven miles from St. John's, on the Ohio River, the congregation is small. They have a neat brick church, which was built some years since, almost entirely at the expense of two brothers, John and Danford Brown. The former has gone to his rest. The latter still lives and hopes for better

times to the church of his affections.

To these notices of the Church in Brooke county, I subjoin an extract from a pamphlet which I had occasion to publish some years since, when the question of forming a separate diocese in Western Virginia was considered. In discussing it I was led to consider the real condition of that part of the State, which unfitted it for the support of a separate organization at that time. The following is, I believe, a true account of it:—

"Those who would see the main causes of the feeble condition of the Episcopal Church in Western Virginia, and of the difficulties in the way of its speedy progress, under any helps that can be brought to bear upon it, must consider the history of Western Virginia, and the peculiarity of her condition, by comparison with other portions of our land, similar as to soil and position. Take, for instance, Ohio and Western Pennsylvania,

lying on two sides of Western Virginia. While the latter (Western Virginia) is more hilly and mountaincus, and less attractive on that account to the emigrant, she has also had other obstacles to settlement and improvement, which have left her far behind the former two. In the first place, the unsettled condition of her land-titles continues to this day to present most serious difficulties in the way of sale to those who would form such materials as might be moulded into Episcopal congregations. Another obstacle to the settlement of Western Virginia is the fact of its being part of a slave-holding State. This has prevented immense numbers from the North from choosing this as their home, while, on the other hand, the fact of the contiguity of Western Virginia to the free States, furnishing a facility for the escape of slaves, has prevented Eastern Virginians from settling there. Episcopal families for a long period of time have in great numbers been passing by or through Western Virginia, and have formed the basis of churches in the South or Southwest. Comparatively few have settled in Western Virginia. The few are indeed the chief materials out of which our churches are composed. The causes above-mentioned have mainly produced the immense difference between the present condition of Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and Western Virginia. While the two former have their forests cleared, their lands well cultivated and covered with comfortable dwellings and farm-houses,-while they abound in flourishing villages and even large towns, and churches and schools and colleges,-it is quite otherwise with the latter. A large proportion of her high hills and mountains are still covered with dense forests. Her villages and towns are few and small,-some not increasing at all, others but slowly. Immense bodies of her lands are owned by non-residents, being only inhabited by those who have no inducements to improve them, and who only seek to gain, during their uncertain residence, just what is necessary for the sustenance of life. On my recent visit, I passed through four tracts of fifty thousand acres each, owned by four different individuals, who were non-residents. These, I am told, are only a few of many large unimproved tracts: hundreds of thousands of acres can be bought at the low price of from twenty-five cents (perhaps less) to one dollar per acre, and of good land too, which will one day, though a distant one, be covered with flocks and herds. Of course, as villages and towns in the interior are for the most part sustained by the surrounding country, if this be uncultivated, or does not flourish, those cannot increase greatly. That Western Virginia has, on her surface and within her bosom, the materials of great wealth and improvement, none can doubt. I have ever believed and said that at some future day she would be one of the most interesting and desirable portions of our country. The improvements in the roads, already made from Winchester, Staunton, and other places, to the Ohio River, have done something for the comfort of the traveller and the improvement of the country; but it is only necessary to travel these roads in order to see in how wild and uncultivated a condition large portions of Western Virginia still are; while those who traverse it on horseback, by the cross-routes, will see a far more rugged state of things. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad will do much for certain portions of Western Virginia; and the Central Railroad, if pursued, as we trust it may be, will do much for some other portions. There will also be a general, though it cannot be a rapid, improvement throughout the greater part of this region. Still, however, the causes mentioned above will continue for a long time to operate. The slave-holder from Eastern Virginia and elsewhere will