Steuben County history: This frontier preacher saw massive changes over his lifetime

James Brownson (or sometimes Bronson) was 19 years old when he arrived at Loon Lake in 1813. Here he, his father Salmon (or Solomon), and James’s brothers took up 400 acres of land (some say 1,200). Young James would spend a lot of time on that land, farming and timbering, besides operating a store.

But the main thread of his life seems to have been preaching. In 1817 and 1818 Brownson and Parker Buel (or Buell) were founding pastors at the Dansville Methodist Church, “converting nearly all the population for miles around.” In 1819 the team was holding meetings in Troupsburg, which led to formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church there.

Methodism was in a growth mode in America just then. John Wesley’s condemnation of the American Revolution … and his personal unpopularity during an unsuccessful pastorate in Georgia … had deterred enthusiasm. But by 1817, that was becoming ancient history.

Methodist policy moved ministers around every year or so, and the needs of this near-frontier would have done the same. We discover that Brownson was preacher in the log school house used by Tuscarora Methodist Church at some point between 1831 (at least) and 1849. Sometime between 1818 and 1830 he was a preacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church of Jasper, visiting once every four weeks on a circuit. At some point he was also pastor of North Urbana Methodist Episcopal Chapel, which was organized in 1837.

In his “spare time” Brownson married Lida Pierce, fathered six children, and joined the Masonic order. He died at 84 and lies buried in Wayland’s Lakeside Cemetery. In his lifetime he saw changes that would have been unimaginable when he was born, during George Washington’s second term.

The year Brownson was born, Eli Whitney put together a cotton gin.

When Brownson was 14, Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston launched the first steamboat line.

When Brownson had been pastoring for eight years, the Erie Canal opened. In his tenth year as a preacher, New York ended slavery.

When Brownson was 35, Daguerre developed the first practical camera.

Three years later, the first American steam railroad started service. When Brownson was in his forties, scheduled steamship service was in place between Great Britain and New York City.

When he was 51, the first commercial telegraph in America started operations.

When he was 55, Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto; the first women’s rights convention met in Seneca Falls.

When he was 63, the Erie Railroad completed its route (through Steuben County) from Lake Erie to New York City.

The Origin of Species appeared when Brownson was 66.

When Brownson was 68, the country became engaged in a great civil war, and four years later finally abolished slavery. The next few years saw the unifications of Germany and Italy, and the development of pasteurization.

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Brownson was still living when a Methodist family in Campbell had a baby boy. So at the beginning of his life Brownson overlapped with George Washington and King George III. At the end of his life he overlapped with Thomas J. Watson, who would build IBM, the world's first computer empire.

And the year after Brownson died, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone.

Brownson saw phenomenal changes, not least among them the boom in American Methodism and creation of at least five churches, all of which he had a hand in.

-- Kirk House, of the Steuben County Historical Society, writes a local history column appearing in The Leader and The Spectator.