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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
James Floy was an American Methodist Episcopal clergyman, editor, and writer of numerous publications.
Background
James Floy was born on August 20, 1806, in New York City, New York. His father, Michael, was an emigrant from Devonshire, England, by occupation a practical horticulturist, who in 1802 married in New York, Margaret Ferris, a native of that city.
Education
James Floy received a good secondary-school training and entered Columbia College, but his father, deeming a practical education of more value, withdrew him, and sent him to England to study and practise horticulture at the Royal Gardens, London.
Career
Upon his return, Floy worked for a time with his father. His parents were devoted Methodists, and in 1831 when he himself experienced conversion, he was in the employ of Waugh and Mason, the Book Agents of the denomination.
Floy became teacher in an African Sunday-school, and through the gradations of class leader, exhorter, and local preacher, finally stepped into the ministry, being admitted to the New York Conference on trial in May 1835; ordained deacon in 1837; and elder in 1839.
His ecclesiastical career had an unfortunate opening. Having, presumably, pledged himself to refrain from agitating the church by discussing the slavery question, as required of those made deacons, he aided in the preparation of an anti-slavery tract and attended an anti-slavery convention.
Accordingly, at the Conference of 1838, with two others, he was charged with contumacy and insubordination, tried, and suspended. Upon his written promise to conform to rule in the future, however, the suspension was lifted.
Notwithstanding this event, Floy soon rose to prominence in the Conference, and later, when it was divided, in the New York East Conference. He was appointed to important churches, served as presiding elder of the New York district, and was a member of the General Conferences of 1848, 1856, and 1860, at the latter having the gratification of seeing the Discipline put on an anti-slavery basis.
It was in the literary field, however, that he became most widely known. Upon his motion, the General Conference of 1848 appointed a committee which recommended a revision of the church hymnal. The revised version which appeared in 1849 was largely the work of two laymen, R. A. West and David Creamer, and Floy, and owed much to the latter’s knowledge and taste. The General Conference of 1836 elected him corresponding secretary of the Tract Society and editor of the National Magazine, which he ably conducted until lack of financial support caused its discontinuance in 1858. Keenly interested in religious education, he prepared Graduated Sunday School Textbooks, three volumes (1861 - 1862).
For almost a quarter of a century, Floy was one of the foremost contributors to the Methodist Quarterly Review. Some of his articles for this periodical may be found in a posthumous edition of his writings, Literary Remains of Reverend Doctor Floy: Occasional Sermons and Reviews and Essays. A companion volume, Old Testament Characters Delineated and Illustrated, appeared the same year. Death came to him suddenly on October 14, 1863, at his home in New York, from a cerebral hemorrhage.
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Religion
His conversion to God occurred February 13, 1831, during a revival in the Allen Street Church. James Floy united with the Bowery Village (now Seventh Street) Methodist Episcopal Church, and for some time acted as teacher and superintendent of a Sunday-school for colored persons under the care of that church. He was licensed to preach in February 1833, two years after his conversion, and for the next two years, he filled the office of a local preacher.
Floy was received into the Traveling Ministry as a probationer at the session of the New York Conference, in the Spring of 1835.
Connections
In 1829 James Floy married Jane Thacker. His first wife having died about 1859, Floy later married Emma Yates, whose death occurred a few weeks before his own.