"As I was living in the midst of all the passing events, I remember I write to you as positive facts your Aff! Father yon furby OF REV. WILLIAM GURLEY, LATE OF MILAN, OHIO, A LOCAL MINISTER OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH INCLUDING A SKETCH OF THE IRISH INSURRECTION AND MARTYRS OF 1798. BY Rev. L. B. Gurley. EMBELLISHED WITH A PORTRAIT. Cincinnati: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, AT THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN, R. P. THOMPSON, PRINTER. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the BY L. B. GURLEY, In the Clerk's Office for the District Court for the District of Ohio. 23.00 PREFACE. IN presenting to the public a biography of my late venerable father, it may be gratifying to the reader to know the sources from whence the facts and materials for the work have been drawn. At the request of many of his acquaintances, several of whom were ministers of our Church, my father spent the summer of 1834 in committing to paper the most important and interesting events of his life, from his childhood to the close of the Irish Rebellion, and his subsequent emigration to this country, thus bringing the narrative down to a period within my own recollection. This was done in a series of letters to myself. It was his design to have had the work published then; but time to prepare it not being at command, it has been unavoidably delayed. From this manuscript, then, most of the facts concerning him have been derived; and a large proportion of the letters, in the form of extracts and quotations from his manuscript, are embodied in this memoir. The sanguinary scenes of the insurrection of 1798 are drawn partly from this source, and partly from "a History of the Irish Rebellion in the County of Wexford," by Rev. George Taylor, a Wesleyan preacher, who was imprisoned at the same time with Mr. Gurley, and whose history was published a few months after the close of the insurrection, having been written on the spot. Besides these sources of information, I am indebted |