I am Quite Moved

My cousin Clarissa and I have been going back and forth about geneological stuff with my family. I have blogged about them before. Anyway, I had previously found an obituary for my great-great-great-grandmother Caroline Roper's father, the white methodist minister(indeed, she herself was a white woman),the Reverend John Thompson Roper, at my alma mater. I didn't copy it then, but I just recently wrote to the United Methodist Historical Collection and they sent it to me. This is my g-g-g-g grandfather, the Reverend John Thompson Roper's, obituary:


REV.JOHN THOMPSON ROPER was born in Mecklenburg *county, North Carolina,
March 30, 1810, and died at his home in Chilton county, Alabama, June 4, 1885. He
was reared principally in Gwinnett county, Georgia, and moved to Algama in the
winter of 1834-5. In the year 1836 he was converted and joined the Methodist Churr 11
A friend writes this concerning him: l' His conversion was of the old Methodist tyne -
cleargut, instantaneous and attended by the witnes~ of the spirit." He was licensed
to preach in June, 1838; joined the Alabama Conference in Januan, 18'39, and remained
a member of this Conference until his death, Jnne 4, 1885.
In 1858 he was superannuated on account of temporary blindness caused by
cataract. In this relation to the Conference he remained until called to his rest in
heaven. This man was a "pioneer preacher." If there are easy places in the life
of an itinerant Methodist preat her, he never found one. On large rircuits, on mlssions
to whites, on missions to blacks, he held on his way until his poor blind eyes
could no longer find the way. He wa8 made of firm stuff. Naturally firm as. the
storm-defying oak, he could become as flexible as the willow where no principle was
involved. Touched and fashioned by Divine grace, he learned to weep with them
that weep, and to rejoice with them that do rejoice. His saintly wife. the companion
of his toils and trials for fifty-four years, still lingers in age nnd feebleness extreme.
awaiting the call to go up higher. John T. Roper is with the dead who died in the
Lord, and his worka follow him