Note 221 — Chapter IV · MISSION TO GEORGIA. 1735‒1737. (continued 2)

It is a remarkable fact that, though Savannah is the chief city in the state of Georgia, Methodism hardly has an existence in it. Wesley left it in 1737; and three years after, Whitefield founded his Savannah Orphan House, which has long since crumbled into ruins. Nothing more was done until 1790, when Hope Hull was sent to Savannah and preached a few times in a chairmaker’s shop, but met with more mob violence than spiritual success. Ten years later, John Garvin tried to collect a society; but the attempt was a failure. The South Carolina Conference, held in 1806, appointed Samuel Dunwody, and he succeeded in forming the first Methodist society in Savannah since the breaking up of that formed by Wesley seventy years previously. Dunwody’s society consisted of twelve members, five of them white and seven coloured. After hard toiling a chapel was erected in Savannah in 1812, and was opened by Bishop Asbury; but, to the present day, the opposition to Methodism is most decided, and the Methodist society and congregation are extremely poor and meagre. (See Dr. Dixon’s “Methodism in America,” p. 282.)