Most preachers would not choose a street corner for a worship service or a whisky-barrel for a pulpit but Methodism’s pioneer missionary bishop, William Taylor, was not most preachers. For seven years (1849–1856) he proclaimed the Gospel in this manner to thousands of the frontier settlers in California— miners who were popularly known ever after as “the Forty-Niners” because they had rushed to the new state hungering for the gold discovered at Sutters’ Creek and in the hills near San Francisco.
William Taylor was born in Rockridge County, Virginia in 1821, the son of Stuart and Martha Elizabeth “Effie” (Hickman) Taylor. By his own account he had experienced an ecstatic conversion to Christ some time around the age of ten. There about that same time, his farmer father, Stuart, was converted at the Methodist’s Cold Sulphur Springs Camp Meeting in the hills of Virginia (1832) and became an itinerant evangelist minister. Taylor senior was so opposed to slavery, as the result of his conversion, that he released his own servants and even paid passage for some of them to return to Liberia. Having been influenced, no doubt, by his father’s ministry, the younger Taylor became a regular participant in camp meetings and revival meetings. In 1841 he had a second religious experience at Panther Gap Camp Meeting (Virginia), and spent the next year studying. Shortly after his twenty-first birthday, in the Summer of 1842, he began employment as a teacher for three months “at Rapp’s Schoolhouse on the south branch of Buffalo Creek, near where [he] had lived with [his] grandmother when [he] was five years of age.” He received his pay directly from the patrons of the community; tuition was four cents a day per pupil. Albert M. Cupp in his book, “A History of Methodism in Rockbridge County, Virginia,” recounts the events leading up to Taylor’s surrender to the itinerant ministry’s call.
“In early August, Taylor gave his pupils a few days’ vacation so that he
and his friend, Tom Henderson, and other companions, might attend a camp meeting being held over in Botetourt County, some fifteen miles away. They walked the entire distance. The Rev. N. J. B. Morgan, Presiding Elder of the Rockingham District, was in charge of the meeting. He requested young Taylor to meet him in his tent and the young man complied.
[TAYLOR:] “He stroked my hair softly and drew me near to his loving heart and said, ‘Brother William, I want to send you as Junior Preacher with Francis A. Harding on Monroe Circuit.’ ‘Why, Brother Morgan, I never preached in my life. I can’t preach.’ He caressed me kindly and said, ‘God has called you to preach, and I know that you can do it and God will bless you and give you success.’ I was awed and amazed, moved and melted, and hardly knew what to say. After a pause, I ventured to ask, ‘What books should I take with me from which I may learn to preach?’ He replied, ‘Take the Bible and the Methodist Hymn Book.’ ‘But I can’t complete my school engagement inside of three weeks,’ I said. ‘All right, finish up as quickly as you can. I will have everything arranged for you.’ So I returned to my school and, in addition to the work it involved, I had a series of revival services and seven powerful conversions to God.”
Having entered into circuit Wesleyan ministries—assigned first to Sweet Springs Circuit (1845) and then to Georgetown (1846)—this preacher from the mountains was presumably well received by most of his parishioners. But at least one of his apparent eccentricities was hard for some to accept. According to a story (otherwise undocumented), as told by John Paul in his book, “The Soul Digger,” one parishioner urged Taylor to buy a suit fitted by a tailor. Taylor rejected the advice “not wishing to predicate his standing in his new station on his outward adornment.” Taylor however eventually adapted to his context, and was later assigned to the pastorate of a prestigious church in North Baltimore.
In 1849 Bishop Beverly Waugh of Baltimore appointed William as the Church’s second missionary bishop to California, following one Isaac Owen; he was essentially sent there to fulfill the ministerial role of a church planter. In a letter to Isaac Owen, dated January 1 of that year, Bishop Waugh wrote:
”After due deliberation, and much prayer for direction, I this day appointed Rev. William Taylor, of the Baltimore Annual Conference, the second Missionary to California, to act in concert with you, and under your direction. Brother Taylor is a most reliable man. About twenty-eight years old—has a wife and one child, and his wife’s sister, who being a member of his family, will accompany him. He has been seven or eight years an Itinerant Preacher. He has a robust constitution—is pious, zealous—steady and uniform. He is a tried man, and you will find him all that you could reasonably expect in a colleague. He will write you in a day or two, at my suggestion. There are strong objections to his removal from North Baltimore, where he is now stationed. We shall have, therefore, to allow him to remain there as long as is practicable. Of course, nothing is settled about the precise time of his starting—nor of the route he will take.”
Taylor arrived in San Francisco in September, 1849, where he organized the First Methodist Episcopal Church, on the West side of Powell between Washington and Jackson. A church was effectively planted, and Gospel seeds were sown.
But Taylor’s zeal as a soul-winner would not permit him to preach solely from the pulpit of a quaint little chapel, in front of a dozen or more prim and proper Methodists. He was a fearless proclaimer of the gospel, living and preaching in a lawless frontier town. You see, half way through the nineteenth century not a single brick building could be found in the entire city of San Francisco, and only a few wooden ones existed. Ninety percent of the population were gold prospectors camping in tents crowded along muddy streets. Only ten percent of the regular twenty thousand residents were women; yet brothels, dancehalls, gambling dens, and whisky saloons abounded in that frontier city of vice.
One of Taylor’s favorite preaching spots was down at the harbor’s Long Wharf, which was built “from the bank in the middle of the block between Sacramento and Clay Streets, where Leidesdorff Street now is, 800 feet into the Bay.” There, he was heard to speak with the ease and grace of a man at his own fireside, climbing atop the nearest whisky or pork barrel and engaging passers by in conversation—a six foot, 207 pound man, sporting a beard worthy of the Patriarchs, inviting complete strangers to an informal Christian service.
After greeting each of the nationalities that stopped to watch the curious happenings, he and his wife Isabella would sing a few gospel songs. Then, with a voice that reverberated throughout the muddy streets, he would choose a simple passage from Scripture and plainly expound it. He would proclaim the power of Christ to transform lives and give victory over the sins and temptations of the wicked city. He would call his listeners to accountability before God. He’d sometimes even enter the saloons and brothels to speak fearlessly to their customers. Oddly enough, the power of his message and the boldness of his person led to acceptance even in such awkward situations. In similar fashion he often preached at different street locations four or five times a day.
He would always preach with the US flag flowing at his side and point to it as a symbol that stood for his right of free speech and assembly. If ever hooliganism or mob mentality threatened to overwhelm his meeting, he would appeal to the “fair play” instincts of his listeners (he always referred to them as “gentlemen”), and, when necessary, ask some from among his audience to maintain order for him.
Although we, for the purpose of this post, have focused on William Taylor’s early ministry in the United States, he is best known in Christian history as a world-wide evangelist. He traveled and preached on all six continents, taking to heart John Wesley’s affirmation, “the world is my parish”—his world journeys totaling 250,000 miles. He authored eighteen books, mainly about his ministries in various parts of the world, and sold tens of thousands of these books to generate income for his family and for his overseas missions programs. All in all, William Taylor did more to expand the work of Methodism than any other in the nineteenth century. Wherever Taylor traveled, God used him to stoke the flames of revival.
— Ron Metheny
LEARN MORE about History’s Eccentric Preachers: https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Preachers-Spiritual-Insights-Annotated/dp/B0D63G29RB/ref
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
An Extraordinary Artifact from the California Gold Rush and the Temperance Movement. Boston Rare Maps. https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/william-taylor-san-francisco-temperance-pledge/
Skinner, C. William Taylor: Preaching a Gospel for the Gold Rush. Preaching.com. https://www.preaching.com/articles/past-masters/william-taylor-preaching-a-gospel-for-the-gold-rush/
Cupp, A. (1920). A History of Methodism in Rockbridge County, Virginia; (chs 11–20). USGenWeb Archives. http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/rockbridge/churches/methodists-2.txt
California Historical Landmarks in San Francisco. NoeHill in San Francisco (noehill.com). https://noehill.com/sf/landmarks/cal0328.asp
Bundy, D. (July, 1989). Bishop William Taylor and Methodist Mission: A Study in Nineteenth Century Social History. The United Methodist Church, General Commission on Archives and History. https://archives.gcah.org/bitstream/handle/10516/5706/MH-1989-July-Bundy.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
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