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missionaries for the freedmen in New Bern.16 Whatever the success of the work, it must have been for a comparatively short time, for on August 9, 1866, the Methodist Episcopal Church "had neither Minister nor member from the summit of the Blue Ridge to the ocean."17 It was on this date that the first official representative of the Methodist Episc0pal Church_in North Carolina, the Rev. John S. Mitchell, 020., of New York, arrived in Gaston County, North Carolina. He was then Super- intendent of Missions in Virginia and North Carolina.18

The "progress and prospects of the work in the two states," however, encouraged the bishops to form the Virginia and North Carolina Conference on January 3, 1867, at Portsmouth, Virginia. At that time Dr. Mitchell was placed in charge of the North Carolina district.‘9 The former combined conference became two separate conferences by

action of the 1868 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The North Carolina COnference included all of the state except for ten

counties west of Watauga County and the Blue Ridge Mountains.20 Its

16J. E. Round, 1‘The Holidays Among the Freedman,“ Christian _ Advocate [New York], January 21, 1864, p. 17, quoted in Pool, 32. 313., H p. 79. Also see J. E. Round, "Our Work in North Carolina,“ Christian Advocate, July 28, 186A, p. 23h, quoted in Pool, 22. £13., p. 219. The original sources could not be located.

17Church Extension Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Sixth Annual Report, 1871, p. Sl.

‘Brbid.

I9Ibid., pp. 50-51; and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Fourty-Eighth Annual Report, 1866, pp. lhh-lhs.

20General Conference, M. E. C., Journal, 1868, p. 314.