By Jack Schley May 11, 2018

The State of Georgia has played host to the Methodist denomination of the Protestant Church since nearly the State’s beginning when the church founders, brothers John and Charles Wesley, arrived here from England in 1736 to spread Christianity through the southern frontier. In a manner of speaking, the church and the Colony of Georgia were born at the same time and the two have made their mark on each other. The City of Columbus has not escaped this relationship; in fact, Columbus has contributed greatly to its development. One such contribution was in the form of the Reverend Dr. Lovick Pierce.

Bishop George Foster Pierce (1811-1884).

Though not originally from Columbus, he made his home and based a substantial portion of his career from here. Born in North Carolina in 1785, Lovick Pierce was said to have come from a “poor and obsolete” background. Prior to his professional career, he received only six months of formal education, where he learned to read the only book available to him: the Bible. At the age of 20 he began a 75 year career in the Methodist Church that was truly “life-long.” He is remembered today for that career as the “Nestor of Southern Methodism” and the “Father of the Methodist Church in west Georgia.”

Lovick Pierce married Miss Ann Foster in 1810 and served his first post as a Chaplain to the U.S. Army out of Milledgeville, Georgia, during the War of 1812. Following his service, he entered the study of medicine, all the while preaching to small congregations. As a child, Lovick Pierce was said to have been timid and sensitive but gifted with a natural eloquence and the ability to easily enter the hearts of his acquaintances. Formally, he was addressed simply as “Dr. Pierce” but to his intimate friends and family he was affectionately called “Lovie.”

The First St. Paul Church in Columbus, built 1859 with L. Pierce as first pastor. The church was destroyed by lightening in 1901.

Having attended the creation of the Georgia Conference of the Methodist Church in Macon in 1831, Dr. Pierce began what was then one of the more hazardous callings of the time. The life of a frontier preacher in the early 1800s was not one of physical comfort or routine; rather, one of constant motion, poverty wages, and exposure to the elements. The pastor went where his work was most needed. On horseback, he rode alone through swamps and dense forests circulating through a wide range of towns and frontier settlements. At night, he often slept on the floor of a stranger’s cabin when shown hospitality. In his saddlebags he carried only his Bible, a hymnal, and spare shirt. Riding this wide circuit eventually landed Dr. Pierce in Columbus in 1836 to serve his first official appointment as the pastor of St. Luke Methodist Church.

Upon arriving to the western most outpost of the State of Georgia, Dr. Pierce found that the St. Luke congregation worshiped in the only brick Methodist church in the state at that time. It sat on an overgrown lot in the middle of a riverbank expanse that was taking the form of a town; the frontier beginning of Columbus. It was here that Dr. Pierce settled his family and set about becoming an industrious citizen. He set in motion to expand the existing house of worship at St. Luke. With his own hands, he helped clear the underbrush out of the city lot and planted elms trees to shade the church yard. To supplement his income, Dr. Pierce invested in a commercial dray business in Columbus, operating hired carts drawn by oxen to haul merchant goods and lumber about town. He quickly developed a reputation as a good business man and an admired preacher. The investment paid off as Dr. Pierce was able to build a four room house in 1838 in the prominent suburb of Wynnton on the hill overlooking downtown. This home was later enlarged by Mr. William W. Garrard in 1855 and became known as “Hilton.” It stood on the wooded lot where current day Hilton Avenue runs into Wynnton Road.

The four room home of Rev. Lovick Pierce after the 1855 renvoation by William W. Garrard. The home once stood in the wooded area where Hilton Avenue runs into Wynnton Road.

At home in Columbus; however, not settled. Dr. Pierce continued to ride through the outlying settlements around Columbus. He facilitated the founding and dedication of many Methodist churches in the Chattahoochee Valley, officiated weddings, baptized children, often preached in revival settings outdoors, and administered to the wider organization of the Methodist Church. He served as a founding trustee of Emory College, which later became Emory University in Atlanta, and was an agent for the Georgia Female College in Macon, which exists today as Wesleyan College. He was moved from the pulpit at St. Luke in Columbus for two years but returned in 1840 when the church’s membership declined. When he arrived, the membership was listed at 378 members and by the end of 1841 it had grown to 739.

Dr. Pierce was influential in the creation of the distinct Southern Methodist Church in 1844 and was appointed as the Presiding Elder over the Columbus District in 1849. While serving as St. Luke’s pastor again in 1850, his son James L. Pierce was given charge of St. Luke’s Factory Mission in Columbus which was established to minister to the workers of the cotton mills along the river.

Perhaps Dr. Pierce’s greatest contribution to the Methodist Church was his son, George Foster Pierce. George Pierce served the Methodist Church alongside his father filling many of the same positions until his own eloquence and capabilities raised him to a superior rank than that of his father. George Pierce served as pastor to St. Luke in Columbus for a year in 1847 before being appointed the presidency at Emory College where he remained until 1854. That year, Lovick Pierce was influential in getting the General Conference of the Georgia Methodist Church to meet in Columbus. George Pierce returned to Columbus for the conference and was ordained as a Bishop. It was in filling this role that it was said of George F. Pierce, “No man in the Methodist Church, South rose to greater heights or was more admired than Bishop Pierce.” It was through his and his father’s work that Columbus became a seat of the Methodist Church in Georgia in the mid nineteenth century. In fact, this time is known as the Great Revival, centering on the year 1858, in which the spiritual influence of the Methodist Church was casting a wide net. Membership at St. Luke rose to such heights that Dr. Lovick Pierce called for the founding of the second Methodist Church in Columbus because St. Luke ran out of seats. Dr. Pierce even supplied the new church with its name.

The Fifth St. Luke Church building in Columbus, completed in 1900, destroyed by fire in 1942.

St. Paul Methodist Church was dedicated by Lovick Pierce on October 9, 1859, and he himself filled the role as the church’s first pastor. The new sanctuary was built on the corner of what is now Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue in downtown. Under Dr. Pierce’s direction, a new policy distinguished St. Paul from St. Luke in that men and women would sit together in the pews. This new policy was not without opposition and some of the men were less than accommodating by refusing to abstain from spitting their tobacco on the floor by the ladies’ shoes.

Between father and son, Bishop Pierce was unmatched in eloquence of speech by any other Methodist preacher in his time. However, his father Dr. Pierce was the more effective and moving speaker of the two. They often traveled together when attending to their ministries across the state. In 1874, Dr. Pierce attended the Georgia Conference meeting of the Methodist Church with his son, the Bishop, and his grandson, all serving as delegates. A friend of these Reverend Pierces once said of them that they had, “… a genius for loving.” They had a natural ability to use their words, their actions, and their faith in God to make others feel loved as important pieces in a greater plan.

It was in 1879, while Bishop George Pierce was traveling a new circuit of the church in the western territories beyond Texas that he received a telegram from his father, “Tell the Brethren I am lying just outside the gates of Heaven.” The Reverend Dr. Lovick Pierce died in Sparta, Georgia, at the age of 95. His body was returned to Columbus and buried in Linwood Cemetery next to his wife. It is here in Columbus that many of the legacies of his 75 years in ministry through the Methodist Church continue to impact the spiritual lives of generations well beyond his own through the flourishing local institutions he founded and ran with a “genius for loving.”

The State of Georgia has played host to the Methodist denomination of the Protestant Church since nearly the State’s beginning when the church founders, brothers John and Charles Wesley, arrived here from England in 1736 to spread Christianity through the southern frontier. In a manner of speaking, the church and the Colony of Georgia were born at the same time and the two have made their mark on each other. The City of Columbus has not escaped this relationship; in fact, Columbus has contributed greatly to its development. One such contribution was in the form of the Reverend Dr. Lovick Pierce.

Though not originally from Columbus, he made his home and based a substantial portion of his career from here. Born in North Carolina in 1785, Lovick Pierce was said to have come from a “poor and obsolete” background. Prior to his professional career, he received only six months of formal education, where he learned to read the only book available to him: the Bible. At the age of 20 he began a 75 year career in the Methodist Church that was truly “life-long.” He is remembered today for that career as the “Nestor of Southern Methodism” and the “Father of the Methodist Church in west Georgia.”

Lovick Pierce married Miss Ann Foster in 1810 and served his first post as a Chaplain to the U.S. Army out of Milledgeville, Georgia, during the War of 1812. Following his service, he entered the study of medicine, all the while preaching to small congregations. As a child, Lovick Pierce was said to have been timid and sensitive but gifted with a natural eloquence and the ability to easily enter the hearts of his acquaintances. Formally, he was addressed simply as “Dr. Pierce” but to his intimate friends and family he was affectionately called “Lovie.”

Having attended the creation of the Georgia Conference of the Methodist Church in Macon in 1831, Dr. Pierce began what was then one of the more hazardous callings of the time. The life of a frontier preacher in the early 1800s was not one of physical comfort or routine; rather, one of constant motion, poverty wages, and exposure to the elements. The pastor went where his work was most needed. On horseback, he rode alone through swamps and dense forests circulating through a wide range of towns and frontier settlements. At night, he often slept on the floor of a stranger’s cabin when shown hospitality. In his saddlebags he carried only his Bible, a hymnal, and spare shirt. Riding this wide circuit eventually landed Dr. Pierce in Columbus in 1836 to serve his first official appointment as the pastor of St. Luke Methodist Church.

Rev. Dr. Lovick Pierce is considered the father of Methodism in Georgia.

Upon arriving to the western most outpost of the State of Georgia, Dr. Pierce found that the St. Luke congregation worshiped in the only brick Methodist church in the state at that time. It sat on an overgrown lot in the middle of a riverbank expanse that was taking the form of a town; the frontier beginning of Columbus. It was here that Dr. Pierce settled his family and set about becoming an industrious citizen. He set in motion to expand the existing house of worship at St. Luke. With his own hands, he helped clear the underbrush out of the city lot and planted elms trees to shade the church yard. To supplement his income, Dr. Pierce invested in a commercial dray business in Columbus, operating hired carts drawn by oxen to haul merchant goods and lumber about town. He quickly developed a reputation as a good business man and an admired preacher. The investment paid off as Dr. Pierce was able to build a four room house in 1838 in the prominent suburb of Wynnton on the hill overlooking downtown. This home was later enlarged by Mr. William W. Garrard in 1855 and became known as “Hilton.” It stood on the wooded lot where current day Hilton Avenue runs into Wynnton Road.

At home in Columbus; however, not settled. Dr. Pierce continued to ride through the outlying settlements around Columbus. He facilitated the founding and dedication of many Methodist churches in the Chattahoochee Valley, officiated weddings, baptized children, often preached in revival settings outdoors, and administered to the wider organization of the Methodist Church. He served as a founding trustee of Emory College, which later became Emory University in Atlanta, and was an agent for the Georgia Female College in Macon, which exists today as Wesleyan College. He was moved from the pulpit at St. Luke in Columbus for two years but returned in 1840 when the church’s membership declined. When he arrived, the membership was listed at 378 members and by the end of 1841 it had grown to 739.

The second St. Paul Methodist Church building on the corner of 13th Street and 3rd Avenue.

Dr. Pierce was influential in the creation of the distinct Southern Methodist Church in 1844 and was appointed as the Presiding Elder over the Columbus District in 1849. While serving as St. Luke’s pastor again in 1850, his son James L. Pierce was given charge of St. Luke’s Factory Mission in Columbus which was established to minister to the workers of the cotton mills along the river.

Perhaps Dr. Pierce’s greatest contribution to the Methodist Church was his son, George Foster Pierce. George Pierce served the Methodist Church alongside his father filling many of the same positions until his own eloquence and capabilities raised him to a superior rank than that of his father. George Pierce served as pastor to St. Luke in Columbus for a year in 1847 before being appointed the presidency at Emory College where he remained until 1854. That year, Lovick Pierce was influential in getting the General Conference of the Georgia Methodist Church to meet in Columbus. George Pierce returned to Columbus for the conference and was ordained as a Bishop. It was in filling this role that it was said of George F. Pierce, “No man in the Methodist Church, South rose to greater heights or was more admired than Bishop Pierce.” It was through his and his father’s work that Columbus became a seat of the Methodist Church in Georgia in the mid nineteenth century. In fact, this time is known as the Great Revival, centering on the year 1858, in which the spiritual influence of the Methodist Church was casting a wide net. Membership at St. Luke rose to such heights that Dr. Lovick Pierce called for the founding of the second Methodist Church in Columbus because St. Luke ran out of seats. Dr. Pierce even supplied the new church with its name.

St. Paul Methodist Church was dedicated by Lovick Pierce on October 9, 1859, and he himself filled the role as the church’s first pastor. The new sanctuary was built on the corner of what is now Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue in downtown. Under Dr. Pierce’s direction, a new policy distinguished St. Paul from St. Luke in that men and women would sit together in the pews. This new policy was not without opposition and some of the men were less than accommodating by refusing to abstain from spitting their tobacco on the floor by the ladies’ shoes.

Between father and son, Bishop Pierce was unmatched in eloquence of speech by any other Methodist preacher in his time. However, his father Dr. Pierce was the more effective and moving speaker of the two. They often traveled together when attending to their ministries across the state. In 1874, Dr. Pierce attended the Georgia Conference meeting of the Methodist Church with his son, the Bishop, and his grandson, all serving as delegates. A friend of these Reverend Pierces once said of them that they had, “… a genius for loving.” They had a natural ability to use their words, their actions, and their faith in God to make others feel loved as important pieces in a greater plan.

It was in 1879, while Bishop George Pierce was traveling a new circuit of the church in the western territories beyond Texas that he received a telegram from his father, “Tell the Brethren I am lying just outside the gates of Heaven.” The Reverend Dr. Lovick Pierce died in Sparta, Georgia, at the age of 95. His body was returned to Columbus and buried in Linwood Cemetery next to his wife. It is here in Columbus that many of the legacies of his 75 years in ministry through the Methodist Church continue to impact the spiritual lives of generations well beyond his own through the flourishing local institutions he founded and ran with a “genius for loving.”

Rev. Dr. Lovick Pierce