Few, Ignatius A

Few, Ignatius A.

a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was born in Columbia County, Georgia, April, 1791. About the year 1804 he was sent North to be under the care of his uncle, then residing in New York, for the benefits of a Northern education. He was prepared for college by a Mr. Traphagen, at Bergen, N. J., and afterwards went to Princeton, but, instead of entering the regular college course, he preferred devoting himself to such accomplishments as music and French, drawing and fencing. After remaining at Princeton some time he went to the city of New York, and after prosecuting his studies there a short time he returned to Georgia. He commenced the study of law, but after his marriage, which took place in 1811, he gave up his legal pursuits, and settled down into the life of a planter, from which he was only aroused by an appointment as colonel of a regiment to repair to Savannah in 1815. At the end of the war he returned to his studies with such intensity as to lead to the neglect of his business and the loss of his property. In the year 1823 he removed to Augusta, and engaged in the practice of the law with flattering success, but in 1824 he was attacked with hemorrhage of the lungs, and from that time was unable to attend to the duties of his profession, and never afterwards fully regained his health. At this period of his life a great change in his character took place. Heretofore he had been inclined to one or other of the forms of scepticism, but Fletcher's Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense falling in his way, his scepticism was dissipated, and his heart opened to the influence of Christianity. In 1828 he was admitted on trial in the South Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. "Notwithstanding he was always an invalid from the time he entered the ministry, he performed a great amount of labor, and filled some of the most important places in the gift of his denomination. He was the projector, and for a time the president, of Emory College, at Oxford, Ga., and rendered important service to the cause of education and sound morals. "The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon Mr. Few by the Wesleyan University in 1838. Dr. Few's last public act was the drawing up of the report on the division of the Methodist Church, which was, adopted by the Georgia Conference in 1845. The excitement produced by this effort was too much for his strength, and, though he partially rallied and lingered during the greater part of the year, his debilitated constitution sank at last, and he died in great peace at Athens, Ga., Nov. 21, 1845, and was buried in Oxford, the seat of Emory College. He left a widow, but no children. -Sprague, Annals, 7:739.