Central Pennsylvania's Northern Tier the Wellsboro District
Central Pennsylvania's Northern Tier The Wellsboro District The Genesee Conference was formed in 1810 by Bishops Asbury and McKendree in accordance with discretionary authority granted them by the 1808 General Conference. The conference was created from the Cayuga (western New York state) and Upper Canada (southern Ontario) districts of the New York Conference and the Susquehanna (north central Pennsylvania) district of the Philadelphia Conference. More specifically, the Susquehanna district included all Pennsylvania drained by the Susquehanna River above its junction with the Juniata River. The General Conference of 1820 transferred the Bald Eagle, Lycoming, Northumberland and Shamokin circuits to the Baltimore Conference. Peck's 1860 history of the Genesee Conference, page 339, describes that event as follows: The large tract extending from the mouth of the Juniata up to Wyoming on the north branch of the Susquehanna, and embracing Buffalo Valley, Penn's Valley, the Bald Eagle country, and the valley of the west branch, was taken from the Genesee Conference without its consent, and attached to the Baltimore Conference. We doubt if there has ever been such a case in the history of Methodism, and there certainly has been nothing like it since 1820. When large portions of annual conferences are detached it has always been done by the concurrence of the conference. It was a matter of no special importance at that time to the Genesee Conference, for she had territory enough, and too much. In addition to the territory now contained in five annual conferences, she had both provinces of Canada under her supervision, and little reason for instituting a quarrel about four circuits on her southern wing.
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