Rev. Arthur W. Elliott
The Rev. Arthur W. Elliott was the most famous of the early Methodist preachers in the county. Although others preceded him, he was the contemporary of those who made the beginnings and first uttered the Word of God to the hardy pioneers of this county. He was born in the county of Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, on the 22nd of February, 1784. At the age of eighteen, moved by the spirit of adventure, he fell in with the tide of emigration, just then beginning to set powerfully toward the great Northwest Territory. On horseback he crossed the Alleghanies, and continued his course westward until he reached the Miami Valley, where he determined to make his future home. He went back to Maryland soon after, where he was married in 1804, and in the year 1805 returned, settling in Liberty Township. Here he remained for many years.
In 1806 an event took place which gave a new current to his thoughts, and changed his whole character and life. He was converted, and after a brief time became a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was admitted in the traveling connection in 1818. From the beginning, however, he devoted himself almost entirely to the work of the ministry, and his labors for the Church of his love were more strenuous and more enduring than any other form of labor. He had purchased a farm on his first arrival, which was swept away by the duplicity of one of his supposed friends. With an effort, he made another start, in which he was successful, and he was a farmer as well as preacher for many years.
He was the founder of the Spring Church, the earliest Methodist organization in Eastern Butler. He was a man of powerful frame, and with great energy and force. As a preacher he was a man of great fervor and power; he moved his audiences at his will, and many were converted under his ministrations. He was a man of wit and humor, and many of his sayings are still preserved by those who were fortunate enough to hear him. He took a decided part in politics, at a time when that was regarded as far more unseemly than now. He was a Whig, and as a Whig speaker he accompanied General Harrison on his famous electioneering campaign of 1840. He was an ardent Mason, and was a member of that organization for more than forty years, in which society he was the grand chaplain of the Grand Lodge of Ohio. In 1854 he removed to Paris, Illinois, where he died January 18, 1858. He had seen his work prosper; his Church, at the time of his birth, had only ninety-three preachers in the United States, but at the time of his death it had 10,794. Few had done more for it than he had.
From A History and Biographical Cyclopædia of Butler County Ohio, With Illustrations and Sketches of its Representative Men and Pioneers, Western Biographical Publishing Company, Cincinnati Ohio, 1882.