Background
Anthony Bewley was born on May 22, 1804, in Tennessee, United States, the son of a local Methodist preacher.
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Anthony Bewley
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Bewley was a member of the Tennessee Conference 1829-1837 and then moved with his wife and children to southwestern Missouri. He joined the Missouri Conference in 1843 but declined to go with it into the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1845. With a few others of like convictions he maintained a loose association and preached to a handful of sympathizers until 1848, when the group was reorganized as the Missouri Conference of the Northern Church and Bewley was assigned to the Washington Mission in Arkansas. There for ten years he worked amid social ostracism and petty persecution, his children excluded from the schools and his sisters so intimidated that they did not dare attend his preaching.
In 1858, as a reward for this devotion to his Church and its principles, Bewley was sent on missionary work to Johnson County, Texas, just south of Fort Worth, in territory dangerous for an abolitionist or a supposed abolitionist to enter. For two years he held his ground, and then Bishop Ames, as if bent on making a martyr, reassigned him to the same post. Bewley made a visit to his old friends in Missouri and then returned reluctantly to Texas.
Serious trouble arose immediately through the publication of a letter, dated July 3, 1860, purporting to be addressed to Bewley by a W. H. Bailey at Benton Creek. The letter gave a long list of "fellow workers, " and discussed the certain election of Lincoln, the underground railroad, combustible material for firing buildings, plans for destroying towns and mills, and methods of cooperating with "our colored friends. " The letter contained nothing that could have been news to Bewley if he had been implicated in such a plot, but it sounded every note calculated to excite mob fury. Church as well as secular papers republished the letter.
With his wife and children, Bewley fled north through Indian Territory to Arkansas and on across the Missouri line. Meanwhile rewards totaling $1, 000 had been offered for his capture, and a posse led by A. G. Brayman and Joe Johnson of Fort Worth was in pursuit. On September 3, 1860, he was overtaken near Cassville, Missouri. He was not allowed to say good-by to his wife, but a bundle of clothes which she sent after him was given to him, and at Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he was held September 4-7, he was allowed to write her a farewell letter. From Fayetteville he was taken to Fort Worth, where a mob hanged him to a tree that had been used on similar occasions. His murder terminated the activities of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Texas.
Achievements
Religion
Anthony Bewley was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Connections
In 1834 Bewley married Jane Winton of Roane County, Tennessee. They had five sons and three daughters.
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Born
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Died
September 13, 1860 (aged 56) -
Nationality
American -
Religion
Protestant