STEPHEN SPURLOCK, METHODIST CIRCUIT RIDER AND PREACHER


     
The reader will be impressed with the privation, labor, and 
sacrivice endured in planting and nourishing Methodism in this 
mountain region.  The mission of Christianity is to the world, 
and one of its grandest conquests is that it carries the gospel 
to the poor. . .[Among] those [who] have traveled amid these 
rock-ribbed mountains, and threaded each winding stream, bearing 
the consecrated cross, and proclaiming the tidings of redemption 
[is] Stephen Spurlock, [who] will not only be remembered by the 
present generation, but [his] name will be transmitted to 
generations yet unborn.

     
Stephen Spurlock appears in the itinerant ranks two years before 
the advance of his gifted brother, Burwell Spurlock, but traveled 
only one year.  He was born in 1786, and converted when quite 
young.  The field of labor he occupied the year that he traveled 
was the Guyandotte Circuit.  Retiring to a local sphere produced 
no diminution either of his love for the Church, or of his zeal 
for the promotion of its interest.  He located in what is now 
known as West Virginia, and, by his abundant labors, contributed 
to the advancement of Methodism in both Virginia and Kentucky.  
An able defender of the doctrines and polity of the Church, and 
his life corresponding with the requirements of the gospel for 
more than fifty years, his opinions and actions have been 
accepted by the people as the teachings of the Word of God.  
He yet lives, and though bending beneath the weight of eighty-four 
years, and crippled and afflicted with palsy, occasionally 
preaches to the people.  To sit at the feet of such a man, and 
learn lessons of piety, is a privilege indeed.  He lives in
Wayne county, West Virginia.


MOA, UM
Redford, A. H., 1818-1884.  The History of Methodism in Kentucky, 
3v.  Nashville, Tennessee, Southern Methodist Publishing House, 
1870.  pgs.  416-417.