PETER CARTWRIGHT.
One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is Peter Cartwright, the "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial labors have passed over his head, and yet he still continues in the field in which he has done such good service, and retains all the popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.
He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of September, 1785. His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his mother was an orphan. Shortly after the close of the war, the Cartwrights removed from Virginia to Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken wilderness. The journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family reached their destination in safety. For two years they lived on a rented farm in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of that time removed to what was called the Green River Country, and settled in Logan County, nine miles south of Russellville, the county seat, and within one mile of the State line of Tennessee.
The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's childhood and youth were passed was the very last place one Would have cared to bring up a candidate for the ministry. It was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was thickly settled with fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union. They actually constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the district, and when the respectable citizens sought to bring them to justice they readily "swore each other clear," and thus set the law at defiance. They carried on such a course of outrage and violence that the respectable citizens were at length compelled to combine for defence