Iowa Methodism Index

The makers of Iowa Methodism:
a twentieth-century memorial of the pioneers
by Aaron W. Haines.
Cincinnati: Printed for the author by Jennings & Pye, c1900.

B

Biographies submitted by Dick Barton.

The year 1851 was an epochal period in the history of the Iowa Conference, in that a number of young men were received into the ranks who should afterwards rise to distinction, on account of the long and faithful service they would render to the Church. Yet there was one of the number who must soon succumb to the inevitable. The career of Alfred Bishop was brief, being called from a promising ministry after two years of toil in the Conference, though he had labored as a local preacher for ten years. He was a native of New York, and had been converted at fourteen; "a good, plain, practical Methodist preacher, seeking by all means to acquit himself as becomes the gospel of Christ." In his dying hour he was sustained, remarking that the Savior was his strong tower, and the grace of God sufficient in the dark conflict.

ALFRED BRUNSON

The first regular Quarterly Conference held in the Dubuque Mission was presided over by Alfred Brunson, November 14, 1833 . He had recently transferred from the Pittsburg Conference, and had been placed on the Chicago District, which then included the northern part of the work in Iowa . He was one of the strong men of his generation. He was born in Danbury , Conn. , February 9, 1793 . He had a common-school education, and was trained as a shoemaker. While living with an uncle in Carlisle , Pa. , he was converted, and licensed to exhort. The same year he began to hold religious meetings in his native State. In 1812 he went to Ohio , and joined the army under General Harrison. In 1815 he was licensed to preach, and in 1820 he became a member of the Pittsburg Conference, where he labored till his transfer to the West. In July, 1836, he moved to Prairie Du Chien to labor among the Indians. In 1839 he gave up the ministry on account of poor health, and began the practice of law, which vocation he followed for ten years. He resumed pastoral work in 1850, and served a number of important charges. During the war in the sixties he was an army chaplain for a year. He was four times a delegate to the General Conference, and a frequent contributor to the religious and the secular journals of the times. His career is outlined in his "Autobiography," which was published in two volumes. He died at Prairie du Chien, August 3, 1882 .

WILLIAM BRUSH became identified with Iowa Methodism in 1858. He was born in New Fairfield, Conn., February 19, 1827 . He entered Amenia Seminary as a student, and while there was converted in his nineteenth year. In 1846 he was a student in Wesleyan University , after which he spent three years at Yale College , where he received his degree. He began his ministry in the New York Conference in 1851, where he preached until he came to Iowa . In 1859 he was elected president of the Upper Iowa University, at Fayette, where he remained for ten years, laying broad and deep the foundations of education for the Church in that part of the State. After retiring from that position he resumed pastoral work until 1875, when he responded to a call to a needy field in the South, and was appointed presiding elder in the West Texas Conference, and he remained in that work for eight years. Returning to Iowa , he finally became a member of the Northwestern Conference, a member of which he died in 1895. Dr. Brush was one of the representative men of the Church, and his work, chiefly as a pioneer, will remain. He was a member of four General Conferences. His son, Dr. F. E. Brush, is an able minister of the Word, and at present a member of the Iowa Conference.