Author Description

My Business Was to Fight the Devil is the fascinating story of Adam Wallace, a young Irish Methodist circuit rider who travelled alone from Ireland to Philadelphia and spent eighteen years on the Peninsula during the antebellum and Civil War years. Regional, church and social historians as well as genealogists will find this book packed with exciting treasures. Some will recognize Wallace as the author of The Parson of the Islands, which contains the interesting story of Joshua Thomas, who preached to the British occupation army on Tangier Island during the War of 1812. Thomas became a legend because of his warning the British that if they went to Baltimore they would be defeated. Their defeat convinced the local people that Thomas was a prophet, and shortly before Thomas died he predicted that Wallace would write his biography. Ten years later Wallace was surprised by a strange set of circumstances which sent him back to the same area. During a snow storm that immobilized him for a month, he completed the task by combining material from other unfinished biographies and his own information. Wallace was also a pioneer in a number of movements which have greatly changed the twentieth century church. In 1853, while on the Lewes (Delaware) Circuit, he went to the ocean at Rehoboth and then wrote to a Wilmington newspaper recommending that a resort type of camp be established there. Twenty years later he helped to start the Rehoboth Camp Meeting Association. Although the Rehoboth camp did not survive, his vision was realized 129 years ago when he helped to found the Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Camp Meeting Association which still successfully operates a religious retreat center. A year before the Civil War he invited a lady to preach at his church near Fruitland, Maryland, beginning a trend which is still growing today. He is also called the father of the Delaware Conference, the first Black conference in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Prior to that he organized the first all-Black circuits and appointed their preachers. He was among the founders of the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness which shifted the emphasis in camp meetings from gaining new church members to development and education. This book provides insight into the social and cultural life of Delmarva before the Civil War. Tourism, transportation, country weddings, funerals, as well as the interaction of Blacks and Whites, are well documented. Numerous references are made to rich and poor, the educated and illiterate, free Negroes and slaves, watermen and tradesmen, as well as doctors and lawyers, weaving together a most interesting account of people, places and unusual events. - Jacket flap.