John Easter (d. autumn 1803), Methodist minister, was born early in the 1760s, probably in the part of Lunenburg County that became Mecklenburg County in 1764. His father was Matthew Easter, but his mother's name is not known. His parents were some of the first Methodist converts in the area, and Easter's Meetinghouse reportedly took its name in their honor. Little is known about Easter's early life, but about 1775 Robert Williams, one of the earliest Methodist ministers to preach in Virginia, converted him to Methodism. He was probably the John Easter who was drafted into the Mecklenburg militia in 1781 but who hired a substitute to take his place. Sometime between April 1781 and April 1782 Easter joined the Methodist itinerancy on trial and preached in Hanover County. He was admitted to full connection in May 1783 and sent to the circuit along the Roanoke River.
In accordance with custom, the general conference assigned Easter to a different circuit every year. He spent most days in the saddle, traveling to the various meetinghouses on his appointed route. In 1784 Easter was appointed to the Richmond County circuit. Subsequently he served in the counties of Sussex (1785, 1788), Mecklenburg (1786), Brunswick (1787, 1790), Amelia (1789), and Surry (1791). The clergy present at the annual conferences elected Easter a deacon in 1787 and an elder in 1789. Praised as one of the most effective early circuit-riders, Easter employed a preaching style as rough-hewn and simple as it was dynamic. Commenting on his oratorical skills, a nineteenth-century Methodist historian described Easter as "plain, unlettered, simple in style, almost rude in speech," yet able to speak "with an authority and power before which pride fell humbled and wicked gainsayers cowered in the dust."
The apex of Easter's ministerial career occurred on the Brunswick County circuit in 1787, when his prowess as a preacher combined with the ecstatic atmosphere of the Second Great Awakening to result in an unprecedented number of conversions. Although some Methodist scholars later credited him with between 1,800 and 2,000 converts, based on his own estimates, his success that year may have been more modest, as conference records indicate an increase of 1,138 members in Brunswick from 1787 to 1788. The number of souls saved notwithstanding, Easter's preaching profoundly affected the Brunswick County circuit in 1787. A letter published in the New-York Packet that year described the enthusiasm there: "Mr. E. has four or five hundred hearers every week day, and on Sundays thousands. Last Sunday, at the Methodist Church, near M. Maybry's, it was supposed he had three or four thousands." During these heady days, Easter converted William McKendree and most likely converted Enoch George, both of whom later became bishops. The Methodist minister Edward Dromgoole, "an eye and ear witness," called Easter's efforts in 1787 "the greatest revival of Religion I have ever seen."
Intensely engaged in Methodist affairs, Easter likely attended the 1784 Christmas Conference in Baltimore, which officially established the Methodist Church as a body independent from the Episcopal Church. On 17 September 1788 he executed a bond and on that day or soon thereafter married a widow, Mary Elliot Walker. They had one son. By 1792 poor health and family obligations may have precluded Easter's remaining in the itinerancy, and he settled into the life of a nontraveling preacher in Brunswick County. In November 1796 Easter became a trustee for the newly incorporated Ebenezer Academy, which already had operated in Brunswick for a number of years and which possibly predated Maryland's Cokesbury College, founded in 1787 and traditionally recognized as the first Methodist school in the United States.
Though Easter had ceased traveling as a circuit rider, he continued to appear at Methodist meetings through his final years, until he eventually overexerted himself and fell ill. John Easter wrote his will on 23 August 1803 and died on an unrecorded date that autumn. His will was proved in Brunswick County on 27 February 1804. His burial place is unknown.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in William W. Bennett, Memorials of Methodism in Virginia . . . (1871), 170–178 (first quotation on 171), and M. H. Moore, Sketches of the Pioneers of Methodism in North Carolina and Virginia (1884), 92–101; reminiscence of Easter in Edward Dromgoole to Francis Asbury, n.d. (ca. 1805), 29 Dec. 1805, Edward Dromgoole Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. (including third and fourth quotations and death and funeral in autumn 1803); Brunswick Co. Marriage Bonds; New-York Packet, 31 Aug. 1787 (second quotation); many references in Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Annually Held in America from 1773 to 1813, Inclusive (1813) and in Elmer T. Clark, J. Manning Potts, and Jacob S. Payton, eds., The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury (1958); Brunswick Co. Will Book, 7:1.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Jacques Vest.
How to cite this page:
Jacques Vest,"John Easter (d. 1803)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Easter_John, accessed [today's date]).
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