ANDERSON COUNTY, TN - MISC - The Story of Reverend John Tunnell ==================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: James D. Trabue JD34TLO36@aol.com ==================================================================== Contributor's Note: This is the earliest source for the allegation the Tunnells were Huguenots. THE STORY OF REVEREND JOHN TUNNELL 1755-1790 page 95 In 1787 Holston Circuit was divided into Holston and Nollichucky Circuits, the two constituting a district with John Tunnell at the head of it. page 129 John Tunnell, "a name fragrant to the Methodists of that early day," was admitted into the traveling connection in 1777. "He was truly an apostolic man. His heavenly mindedness seemed to shine in his face, and made him more like an inhabitant of heaven than of earth." "His gifts as a preacher," says Jesse Lee, "were great." Though comparatively forgotten, he takes historical rank among the founders of Methodism in the West. A contemporary of Mr. Tunnell writes: "Next to Asbury, in the estimation of many, stood the placid Tunnell, the philosophic Gill, and the pathetic Pedicord. It would be difficult to determine to which of these primitive missionaries, as men of eminent talents and usefulness, the preference should be given. Tunnell and Gill were both defective in physical strength; Pedicord was a man of much refined sensibility. They were all children of nature, not of art, but especially Tunnell and Pedicord. A sailor was one day passing where Tunnell was preaching. He stopped to listen, and seemed to be much affected, and on meeting with his companions after he left he said: "I have been listening to a man who has been dead and in heaven; but has returned , and is telling the people all about that world." And he declared to them that he had never been so affected by anything he had ever seen or heard before. True it was that Tunnell's appearance very much resembled that of a dead man, and when with his strong musical voice he poured forth a flood of heavenly eloquence, as he frequently did, he appeared indeed as a messenger from the invisible world." (Life of Thomas Ware, p. 85) Mr. Tunnell died of pulmonary consumption near Sweet Springs, Va., in July 1790. The minutes pronounce him "a man of solid piety and godly sincerity, well known and much esteemed by preachers and people." Stevens says: "Tunnell was one of the most eloquent preachers of his age." A relative of his, writing me from Kansas informs me that the place where he was buried has been discovered. His grave is without a monument. He scarcely needs a monument of brass or granite or marble; for his truest monument is the holy, spiritual structure of the Methodist Church in America which he aided in rearing; yet it would be a pious and grateful movement that would place a neat slab over the sacred spot where his dust sleeps. page 176 to 183 In Chapter V. John Tunnell was briefly noticed as one of the celebrities of the first Conference west of the Alleghanies; but a man of such talent, such angelic piety, so intimately connected with the introduction of Methodism into the Holston Country, and so conspicuous as an instrument of good in it, deserves a more particular notice. William Tunnell, father of the subject of this sketch, was born in France in the first decade of the eighteenth century--it is believed in the year 1703. He was the oldest child of his parents, and the only one born in France. The parents of William Tunnell were stout Calvinists, godly people. Removing to Yorkshire, England, when William was an infant, the family soon became thoroughly Anglicized. The religious faith of the family was pronouncedly, pugnaciously Calvinistic. There are yet "John Calvin" Tunnells. Anne Howard, wife of William Tunnell and mother of John, born in Yorkshire, England in 1710, was the daughter of a gentleman. The title "Lady Anne" clung to her to the day of her death. William and Anne Tunnell were married in England, but the date of their marriage is not known. They emigrated from Yorkshire, England to Virginia, and settled in Spottsylvania County, two miles below Fredericksburg, about the year 1736, and they resided in that vicinity some years. William Tunnell died, it is believed, in Loudoun County, Va., December 28, 1787. Anne Tunnell died at the house of her son, Rev. William Tunnell, near Robertsville, Anderson County, Tenn., February 18, 1814, at the advanced age of one hundred and four years. Rev. Robert M. Tunnell, a great nephew of John Tunnell, and a Congregationalist minister of the gospel in Manhattan, Kan., to whom I am indebted for most of the information contained in this sketch not hitherto published, writes: "Two of John Tunnell's brothers--Revs. William Tunnell, a Baptist preacher, born 1751, and Stephen Tunnell, my grandfather, a Methodist, born 1753--removed from Virginia to Tennessee. William settled near Robertsville, Anderson County, brought up a family of thirteen children, and died in August, 1814. My grandfather, Stephen Tunnell, settled in Washington County, Tenn., in 1789. He brought up a family of nine sons and one daughter. Three of his sons (Perry, born in 1787; Stephen, born in 1790; David, my father, born in 1800) were Methodist preachers. Another brother of John Tunnell, Robert, emigrated from Virginia to North Carolina, and settled, I think, in Buncombe County. My father's birthplace was Washington County, Tenn. I have relatives in Washington, Sullivan, Hawkins, and Greene Counties." John Tunnell was born near Fredericksburg, Va., in the year 1755, but his parents removed to Fairfax County when he was a child. He was the youngest of a large family. His literary education was not neglected though he was not sent to college. His religious training differed somewhat from that of the average Virginian of his day. After the straitest sect of the Protestant faith, he was brought up a Calvinist. Under a strict and thoughtful tutorage, such as was usually bestowed by Calvinistic parents in that day, he gained in his boyhood a familiar acquaintance with the Word of God. In his nineteenth year he became the subject of a powerful spiritual awakening, and thenceforward his Bible knowledge under the guidance and illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, became as "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." Though there was coincident with his new birth a development that lifted him out of the hardness and narrowness of the creed of his inheritance, he retained his faith in the sovereignty of God, in his Word and covenants, as firmly as any of his ancestors who, through a century and a half of storm and battle fought under the Huguenot flag. Though he became a Wesleyan, he was never a bigot or a partisan. Mr. Tunnell's older brothers were soldiers in the revolutionary war, but the delicacy of his health would have prevented his taking an active part in the struggle. He was awakened and regenerated under the ministry of Rev. William Watters (the first native Methodist traveling preacher in America), in Fairfax County, Va., in the summer of 1776. Reliable family tradition points to William Watters as Mr. Tunnell's spiritual father, and the fact that Mr. Watters traveled the Fairfax Circuit in 1776 confirms the tradition. The approximate date of Tunnell's conversion is clearly settled by a sentence in Asbury's journal. In the brief notice of the funeral of Mr. Tunnell, which occurred in 1790, Asbury says: "It is fourteen years since Brother Tunnell first knew the Lord, and he has spoken about thirteen years." This places his conversion in 1776, and shows that he was admitted into the traveling connection on trial "at a preaching house near Deer Creek, in Harvard County, Md.," at a Conference which began "May 20, 1777." Bishop Asbury, in his journal, boasts of the increase in the number of preachers within the few years preceding this Conference saying: "We now have twenty-seven who attend the circuits, and twenty of them were present." To this heroic little band John Tunnell joined himself. The parting of the preachers was heartrending as the English preachers were expecting to return to England during the year. Asbury says: "When the time of parting came, many wept as if they had lost their firstborn sons. They appeared to bi in the deepest distress, thinking, as I suppose, they should not see the faces of the English preachers any more." With the prospect of losing the English preachers, whose loyal hearts turned to the mother country in the revolutionary struggle, it was a Godsend that fourteen recruits joined the itinerant ranks at this Conference, some of them afterwards men of mark. Among those who started abreast with Tunnell were: Caleb B. Pedicord, William Gill, John Dickins, and Reuben Ellis. Abel Stevens says: "The Conference was held at the preaching house of John Watters at this time one of the chief rural centers of Methodism in the State." Mr. Tunnell was sent from this Conference to the famous Brunswick Circuit in Virginia, with William Watters and Freeborn Garrettson, where he labored efficiently. The Brunswick Circuit had been the theater of wonderful pentecostal scenes under the Methodist ministry since 1774, and was therefore an excellent school for the youthful, ardent, and gifted Tunnell. Here he must have caught the holy flame and become imbued with that zeal and aggressiveness that very soon put him in the forefront of American pioneer preachers. His appointments after were as follows: Berkeley, 1779-80; Kent, 1781; East Jersey, 1782; Kent, 1783; Dorchester, 1784; Charleston, S. C., 1785; elder of a district embracing East Jersey, Newark, New York, and Long Island, 1786; elder of a district embracing Holston and Nollichucky, 1787; elder of a district embracing Tar River, Bladen, New River, Greenbrier, and Botetourt, 1789. The last-mentioned district, embracing portions of Western Virginia and East Tennessee, was Mr. Tunnell's last appointment. In the minutes of 1790 he appears as a superannuate with an appropriation of œ19 8s. 10d. In the same minutes his name appears among the obituary notices. These facts show that the Conference at which his relation was fixed was held before his death, and the minutes were published after it. Where and when the Conference for the Holston preachers for this year was held, there are no published records to show. When, in 1790, Mr. Tunnell saw that his end was approaching, he rested to await his Master's call at the house of a friend near Sweet Springs in Monroe County, now in West Virginia. While his friend and commander, Bishop Asbury, was far away holding Conference at Charleston, S. C., and superintending the work in the Carolinas and Georgia, Mr. Tunnell told his anxious friends that he was confidently praying that his life might be spared till the Bishop should come and he could inform him of the condition of the work committed to him, bid him farewell, and then die in peace. As his friends knew not where the Bishop was, they though that his constant expectation of seeing him was the hallucination of a sick man's brain. But on the last day of May a tired-looking man rode up to the house where the invalid lay, and asked: "Is Rev. John Tunnell in this house?" Being answered "Yes," he dismounted and walked in. It was Bishop Asbury. The dying young missionary's prayer was answered. Strength was left to tell of his work, to set things in order, and to join with his honored and beloved chief in prayer and thanksgiving to God. I find the following in Asbury's journal: "Monday, May 31.--Rode to New River, forty or fifty miles. Here I saw John Tunnell, very low, a mere shadow, but very humble and patient under affliction." This was Bishop Asbury's last sight of Tunnell till he saw him pale in death. I find the following entry in the Bishop's journal for July, 1790: "Friday, 10.--We had a tedious, tiresome journey over hills and mountains to Pott's Creek. After a melting season at Brother C.'s [probably Cox's], we came to Brother W.'s, where we were informed of the death of dear Brother Tunnell. Saturday 11.--Brother Tunnell's corpse was brought to Dew's Chapel. I preached his funeral sermon. My text: 'For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.' We were much blessed, and the power of God was eminently present. It is fourteen years since Brother Tunnell first knew the Lord, and he has spoken about thirteen years and traveled through eight of the thirteen States. Few men as public ministers were better known or more beloved. He was a simple- hearted, artless, childlike man. For his opportunities, he was a man of good learning; had a large fund of Scripture knowledge; was a good historian, a sensible improving preacher, a most affectionate friend and a great saint. He had been wasting and declining in health and strength for eight years past, and for the last twelve months sinking into consumption. I am humbled. O let my soul be admonished to be more devoted to God!" Mr. Tunnell died aged thirty-five years. He was never married. He was characterized by Ware as "the placid Tunnell;" but his placidity was not the placidity of intellectual and moral weakness, nor of the lack of passion and emotion, but the placidity of power. Probably neither Asbury nor Coke had a stronger purpose or a firmer will than the "placid" John Tunnell. He was loftily solemn, too, but with no traces of gloom or acidity, and few knew that he had an enjoyment of mirth, a sense of humor that was deep and exhaustless. If the oak and hickory forests of the Holston Country could tell their secrets, they would whisper of many a hearty laugh awakened among them as he journeyed with some friend from one preaching place to another. Of course those woods listened also to many a sweet hymn poured forth on the ambient air and many a fervent prayer addressed in solitude to the Father of Spirits. Those forests also heard the first delivery of some of the sermons which God used to kill and make alive again so many souls; for the saddle was his study, and from his saddle he was accustomed to rehearse his sermons as he rode from appointment to appointment. Tunnell was a man of strong faith. The following story has come down to us from eyewitnesses: Once he was preaching to a considerable company in the woods, when a terrible storm suddenly swept down upon them, frightening even the bravest. The forests crashed before it, and it came straight toward the worshipful assembly. Mr. Tunnell, lifting his voice above the roar of the tempest, shouted to the people to sit still, every one, for their lives. He then knelt and calmly asked God to take care of them. The hurricane veered just before it reached them, passed round them, hurled back again into the original line, and swept on. Of man and beast not one was hurt. This story serves at least to show the great confidence placed in Mr. Tunnell by the people who knew him. If true in all that it implies, it illustrates the omnipotence of his faith and the availability of the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man. HOLSTON METHODISM FROM ITS ORIGIN TO THE PRESENT TIME VOLUME I. FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF METHODISM INTO THE HOLSTON COUNTRY TO THE YEAR 1804 BY R. N. PRICE PUBLISHED 1904