January 1737 Wesley's Warming Journey

JANUARY  1737

January 1737 

Wesley's Warming Journey

By Brenda Rees

Between the end of December, 1736 and January, 1737 is a time in which Wesley first offers an extempore prayer.  In this Fifth Frederica Journal, Wesley is visiting Frederica for the fifth and last time.  Nehemiah Curnoch, in published 1909 book , reprinted in 1938, gives details from Wesley’s deciphered diary.  Material is “accumulated for its elucidation.”  Curnoch wrote (1909) “an unusual shorthand had to be learned … a cipher without a key deciphered.”

FIFTH FREDERICA JOURNAL cont.

Mural of Darien, a Scotch Highlander settlement near Frederica.  John Wesley would visit this disputed borderland in Spanish Florida and the developing Colony of George in 1736 – 1737.  Bishop Hendrix of Kansas had provided one of the missing Georgia Diaries that filled in gaps in Wesley’s Journal.  Photograph by Brenda Rees ©

After spending New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, 1736 in the woods, John Wesley begins a new year and his evangelistic endeavors with a wild, raw early American experience.

Saturday, Jan.1, 1737 – Provisions short.  Had “barbecued bear’s flesh….”

Sunday, Jan. 2, 1737 –  At Darien, Scotch Highlanders settlement, 20 miles from Frederica.  “I was surprised to hear an extempore prayer before a written sermon,” Wesley wrote.  In diary, evening entry

7¾  “Mrs. MacKintosh’s supper and singing; I prayed extempore

Monday, Jan. 3, 1737 –  Wesley left Darien in a periagua for Frederica.

Wednesday, Jan. 5, 1737 –  Wesley arrived in Frederica for the fifth time and stayed with the Hirds.  For most of this last visit to Frederica, Wesley stayed indoors and limited personal contact to Hirds and Westons.

Saturday, Jan. 22, 1737 – Mr. Tackner and Mr. Hird are in a dispute.

Sunday, Jan. 23, 1737 – Wesley admonishes “two or three who were going a – shooting; … they made light of it and went on.”

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 1737 – Wesley hears of sloop in river preparing to travel to Savannah.  Wesley’s first thought is of Miss Sophy.

“After having beaten the air in this unhappy place for twenty days, at noon I took my final leave of Frederica.  It was not any apprehension of my own danger, though my life had been threatened many times, but an utter despair of doing good there, which made me content with the thought of seeing it no more.” Curnoch 312,313

Wesley reads Machiavelli’s Works.  Weather is stormy and foggy.

Monday, Jan. 31, 1737 – At Skidoway, then Thunderbolt and finally Savannah.  He met Miss Sophy with Mrs. Musgrove at Cowpen.

Wesley wrote in his Journal, “For indeed from March 13, 1736, the day I first spoke to her, till that hour, I cannot recollect so much as a single instance of my proposing anything to her, or expressing any desire, which she did not fully comply with.”  Curnoch 313, 314