Poe, Daniel

Poe, Daniel a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and brother of the preceding, was born in Columbiana County, Ohio, Oct. 12, 1809. In August, 1.82, he united with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Young as he was, he was soon appointed a class-leader, and was licensed to exhort. He prepared at an academy for college, and studied at Augusta College, Kentucky. He was licensed to preach, and admitted into the Ohio Conference, and appointed to travel the Letart Falls Circuit, where he labored acceptably and successfully. The next year he was appointed to the Eaton Circuit, and the year following to the Hamilton Circuit, and in 1835 to the Oxford Circuit. In May 1836, he was sent to the Oneida and Menomonee Mission, west of Green Bay. He commenced a school among the Oneida Indians, and extended his visits to those at Brothertown, and other fragments of tribes scattered through the Wisconsin Territory, and finally succeeded in building up a flourishing mission, which continues to our day to exert a most salutary influence among this reclaimed savage tribe. In the autumn of 1838 Mr. Poe traveled on horseback, through an almost unbroken wilderness, from Green Bay to Alton, Ill., to attend the Illinois Conference lie was then transferred back to the Ohio Conference; but he could not get to Ohio in time to receive an appointment that year. In January 1839, his brother, \who was presiding elder of the Tiffin District, employed him on the Mexico Circuit, where he labored till the session of his Conference in September, 1839, when he was appointed to the M'Arthurstown Circuit. The next two years he was appointed to Tariton. In September 1842, he was transferred to the Texas Conference. On his arrival there he addressed himself with his accustomed zeal and energy to his work, but one of the great wants of the country that first impressed him was the need of schools and teachers. In view of this destitution he returned to Ohio, in order to secure a corps of teachers. After a few months he returned to Texas, and shortly after commenced laying the foundations of an institution of learning at San Augustine. The next Conference resolved to adopt it and give it their patronage. But, besides this educational work, Mr. Poe served the San Augustine Circuit, which subjected him to the necessity of traveling some three hundred miles every four weeks. He kept up his engagements with regularity, and to the satisfaction of all concerned, but the exertion necessary to this end proved too much, and in 1844 he fell a prey to disease, and died after a very short illness. His last words were a testimony of the happy servant to whom the Master bade a hearty welcome. "Happy—very, very happy!" were the last words of Daniel Poe. "As a man of intellect," says bishop Morris, "I should place Poe considerably above the medium, though his mind was sober and practical rather than striking or brilliant. His perceptions were quick and clear, and he had that strong common sense and sound, discriminating judgment that gave great weight to his counsels and great efficiency to his movements. In his moral constitution he was distinguished chiefly for the resolute and the heroic. He had a naturally kind and amiable spirit. He was far from being impetuous in his movements or hasty in his decisions; but when his purpose was once deliberately and conscientiously formed it was impossible to divert him from the course of his sober convictions. With the highest degree of physical courage, he united that higher courage which has its foundation in principle and in faith. The sentiment of fear, except as it had respect to (God, never found a lodgment in his bosom." His preaching was such as might have been expected from his solid and well- disciplined mind, and his earnest, resolute, and eminently Christian spirit. He spoke with great simplicity and directness, but without any of the graces of oratory. His discourses were well-considered, well-digested expositions of divine truth. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 7, 786 sq.; Finley, Sketches; Minutes of Conferences, 1845. (J. H. W.)