REV. LITTLEJOHN UTLEY.

EV. LITTLEJOHN UTLEY was born February 7, 1775, and died May 13, 1859, in his eighty-fifth year. He died at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He married Sarah Walton in 1797, and to them were born ten children, two of whom moved to Utah and one became a Baptist minister. In early life he was fond of dancing, but decided to change his life, and he joined the church and soon after entered the ministry. In his latter days he lived amongst his children and grand-children of whom he had a number when he died.

      He was ordained to the gospel ministry on April 28, 1822, by Revs. Mills Barrett and John Hayes. He had, however, before this time been zealously engaged in exhorting his neighbors and friends to seek the Saviour. In 1834, at the North Carolina Conference at Pleasant Spring, he was Moderator and preached the introductory sermon. At the Conference at Pleasant Grove in Chatham county, in 1836, he was elected Moderator, and was chosen to preach the introductory sermon at the next Conference, with Elder Frederick Rollins as alternate. In 1837, he was assisting Elder Hayes at Flemington, North Carolina. And in 1840, Elder Utley was appointed a messenger from the North Carolina Conference to the Freewill Baptist Association, and was also evangelist the ensuing year.

      In 1842, he and H. B. Hayes organized the Christian church in Raleigh in a Baptist church on the 22nd of September, the Baptist church having agreed to the [72] change. In 1849, he attended the North Carolina and Virginia Conference at Hanks' chapel as a messenger from the North Carolina Conference. In 1854, the North Carolina and Virginia, and North Carolina Conferences met as one at O'Kelly's chapel in Wake county, under the name of the North Carolina and Virginia Conference. Henceforward he continued a member of the united conference. In 1856, he attended the Conference at Hanks' chapel and was appointed a fraternal messenger to the Georgia Conference.

      His last pastorate was at Damascus, five miles from the University of North Carolina. "He baptized Mr. Bryant Stroud when he was unable to hold him up, and took a colored man to perform the manual part" of the office. He was peculiar in that "he would take no salary, but would accept a gift."

      His ministerial work was done mainly in Wake, Chatham and Orange counties. Few men labored more successfully than he did. He enjoyed the entire confidence of the public as a minister of the gospel; his praise was in all the churches; and for more than forty years of vigilant and unabating ardor in the Lord's vineyard, he was abundantly successful in winning souls to Christ. Up to his very last hours, he continued to point sinners to that Saviour who had sustained and comforted him. After an illness of several months, which he passed with Christian fortitude and resignation, he closed his earthly experience in great peace. A granddaughter gave the following account of her grandfather's death:

      "Grandfather's holy life and triumphant death was a beautiful proof of the reality of the religion that sustains the Christian in the dying hour. When near his end a friend asked if he knew him, and he replied, 'I know one thing--I know that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.' His last words to his physician were: 'Prepare to meet thy God.' On the [73] morning of his death he became delirious, his mind seemed lost to all else but the sweet prospect of a happy entrance into the brighter world. He asked for his Bible that he might hold family prayer, and while a friend read a favorite psalm, he became as composed as an infant, but ere the oft-repeated duty was performed, he fell asleep in Jesus--died as he had lived, a child of God. The funeral was preached from a text of his own selection, found in II Timothy 4: 6th, 7th and 8th verses, 'For I am now ready to be offered, etc.'"

[LCM 72-74]