gether with the difficulty of obtaining the most meager support, influenced him to this step.*

In his local relation, however, he was not idle. His name stands recorded as one of the eight persons who formed the first class at Ebenezer,† in Clarke county. Spending the principal portion of the week in teaching school, he devoted his Sabbaths to the work of the ministry, in which he had already attained eminence. His mind, however, had no rest. He was then an ordained Deacon. He felt the incongruity of such an office in the Church, without a pastoral relation; and the more he pondered the duties devolving upon a minister of the gospel, the more unpleasant he felt to hold the office without an opportunity to discharge the duties involved. He was not willing to be what was but a little more than a nominal minister of the gospel; and this gave him much disquietude of mind. Some gentlemen of the bar urged him to study law and enter upon the practice, stating that his talents-analytical and strongly discriminative—

*Among the preachers who were traveling in this division of the work, Messrs. Burke and Page were the only married men who had been able to continue in the itinerancy.

† Bishop Kavanaugh writes us from Lexington, Kentucky, March 11, 1868: "I learn from my mother, that he gave the Church the name it bears, or rather has borne, in the various edifices which the society there has erected, and which the remaining members and their friends are about to erect, for Ebenezer, this spring and summer, under the auspices of our young and enterprising brother, W. T. Poynter, so recently taken into the Kentucky Conference, and so new in the ministry, and now the stationed preacher at Winchester, Kentucky."

eminently fitted him for that profession; but his convictions were that it was his duty to preach the gospel of the grace of God, and that he dare not compromise this duty. Believing that he could, without the compromise of principle, become a minister of the gospel in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and sustain the relation of pastor, he determined to do so, made his application, and was received.

After entering the Protestant Episcopal Church, he spent a short time in the city of Louisville, but afterward settled in Henderson, as the rector of that parish, where, on the 16th of October, 1806, he ended his labors and his life.

Reared under Methodist influences, blessed with the example and the instruction of pious parents from his childhood, converted, and having entered the ministry when only a youth, during the entire period of his connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church, his piety shone with resplendent luster. As a preacher, "he was not boisterous, but fluent, ready, and his sermons smoothly delivered; his style perspicuous, and every word expressive of the idea intended."

However much we may regret that he was influenced to make any change in his Church-relations, it is gratifying to know that he carried into the Communion which he entered, the deep piety and devotion to the work of the ministry that distinguished him as an evangelist in the Church of his father. Judge Scott says: "He sustained an excellent character until he died."

We close this sketch with the following letter, received by us from the Rev. B. B. Smith, D.D., the Senior Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States:

"Some years after I entered upon the office of the first Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kentucky, it occurred to me that it might become a matter of some interest to those who should come after me, if I were at some pains to collect such fragmentary notices as I could obtain of those early clergy who accompanied the first colonies which came to Kentucky, chiefly from Virginia. Some of these notices were not at all creditable to the characters of some of the colonial clergy. For example: Dr. Chambers, of Nelson county, fell in a duel with the celebrated Judge Rowan; and the distinguished Judge Sebastian, who escaped impeachment by resigning-on the accusation, which proved susceptible of a favorable interpretation, of receiving a pension from the Spanish Governor of Louisiana. The letters of orders of both these, and of that amiable and blameless Swedenborgian, Dr. Gant, of Louisville, by Bishops in England, were submitted to my inspection.

"The most favorable impression made by any of them upon my mind, was made, by all that I could learn, by the Rev. Williams Kavanaugh, of Henderson, who, however, was not ordained in England, but either by Bishop White, of Pennsylvania, or by Bishop Madison, of Virginia, if I remember aright.

VOL. I.-8

"Amongst my first acquaintances in Henderson were several who distinctly remembered to have heard him preach; and some, I think, who had received baptism at his hands. His memory was cherished as that of a good man, an instructive and interesting preacher, and of one who adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour,' by a blameless and holy life. He adorned his sacred profession in all things.'

John Kobler was born in Culpepper county, Virginia, August 29, 1768. Through the example and teachings of a pious mother, he was early impressed with the importance of religion, and on the evening of the 24th of December, 1787-then in the nineteenth year of his age-was happily converted to God. In 1790,* he entered upon the itinerant work, and was appointed to Amelia Circuit. His second year was on the Bedford; his third, on the Greenbrier-all in the State of Virginia. In 1793, though only twenty-five years of age, he was placed in charge of the District, as Presiding Elder, embracing New River, Green, and Holston Circuits, where he remained until 1797, when he succeeded Mr. Poythress in Kentucky.

After the termination of the Indian war, the North-western Territory began to settle rapidly. That portion of it, lying in the State of Ohio,

*The probabilities are that he was admitted in 1789, as it is so stated in the memoir of him in the General Minutes, as the Minutes of 1790 recognize him as "remaining on trial." This is confirmed by his appointment to a District as Presiding Elder, in 1793. The Minutes of 1789, however, have no notice of his name.

known as the Mad River country, was first settled by emigrants from Kentucky, while numbers from the same State settled on the Big and Little Miamis.* Among those who had gone from Kentucky, were many members of the Methodist Church. The emigration from the State was so great that "many of the societies were broken up." It was only natural that Methodists from Kentucky should look to the State whence they had emigrated for ministerial aid.

Mr. Kobler, then in the flower and strength of manhood-possessed of a constitution naturally robust; deeply alive to a sense of his responsibility to the Church and to God; familiar with the dangers of frontier life, and well prepared to meet its privations and hardships-cheerfully volunteered to be the first missionary to cross the Ohio. In the year 1798, he enters on the duty of forming a circuit in the North-western Territory. In entering upon that field of ministerial labor, "he found the country almost in its native rude and uncultivated state.”

* Methodist Magazine, Vol. IV., p. 311. †Western Methodism, p. 74.

The Rev. Mr. Hinde, in the Methodist Magazine, Vol. V., p. 270, fixes the date of Mr. Kobler's entrance on his work in the North-western Territory at 1799; but Mr. Kobler himself, in an account furnished by him for the Western Historical Society, in 1841, and published in Finley's Sketches of Western Methodism, p. 169, says: "In the year 1798, I was sent by Bishop Asbury, as a missionary, to form a new circuit in what was then called the North-western Territory." His name, for 1798, stands in the Minutes in connection with the Cumberland Circuit. Judge Scott informs us that Bishop Asbury withdrew him from the Cumberland, and appointed Lewis Hunt in his place.